09-02-2007, 04:04 PM
Bungalowbill Wrote:very interesting article, doc. a very worthy and complex subject...Very nice points BB. And, I think we agree for the most part. Your thoughts about how blind tasting helps manufacturers with their blends is well taken. However, the article written by Rob is about the value of using blind tastings to help consumers buy cigars. Big difference.
i come down somewhere in the middle, but then i'm not the average taster... try this on for size: non-blind/blind tasting is where it's at. i'll try to explain...
i was trained to taste beer like they do in competitions, blind. you're not only looking for characteristics, the first order of business is to find any flaws. believe me, when your livelyhood is directly affected by your ability to pick up minute traces of compounds, it sharpens one's concentration, big time. the stakes are not just enjoyment. you make bad beer, many people potentially lose their jobs. it's a whole different ball game. like kurt russell once said, there's playing ball, and then there's playing ball for money.
of course this can eliminate all joy out of just kicking back and enjoying something. i had to struggle with that for quite a while... i mean, getting anal about the profile of a bud light at a barbeque, you can see how it could get ridiculous. the solution? find the ability to throw that switch in your head where you can just enjoy something for it's own sake, or click on the analysis computer in your palate.
once trained in beer tasting, i found i could adapt that skill to food and cigars quite easily, which makes me more of a snob than most, but at the same time i feel i really can appreciate when something hits a home run. imho, blind tasting is absolutely essential if you want to take your palate to the next level. believe me, you don't know your own blind spots and prejudices until you face 'em blind.
...at the same time it is absolutely not the end all be all.
as for cigars, i take pride in being able to smoke impartially, with labels and prior knowledge fully in play. i notice all the time that cigars vary stick to stick, even coming from the same box. there's an objective distance you turn on, even if only for an instant... an ability i did not fully have before i was trained in blind tasting. i usually analyze things only a few seconds out of a full smoke. the rest of the time i flip the mental switch and just enjoy, wallowing in fruit of so much labor and love.
Also, there is a second difference, which is worth noting. Brewing beer, once you have decided on the blend, is very consistent. That is, given that you have not allowed the beer to sit in the baking sun for a week, you are likely to get a very consistent product from bottle to bottle. Not so with cigars. With different rollers, and different bunchers, it is posslble to get very different construction, burn and tastes from cigars within the same batch. Not so with beer.
Rob did agree with you about the value of being able to train your palate when he said that blind tasting : "allows a cigar smoker to test their ability to recognize different types of tobaccos (e.g., different countries, different seeds) and to see if they can identify a cigar they have smoked before from memory."
These differences are quite important when trying to decide which cigars to buy. It's always better to have as much background information as possible: reading different reviews to see if there is consistency between them, and reading up on the story behind the cigars.
Doc