Today's video might be a little controversial. Alan Britt and I are here to chat about a complicated subject in the world of cigars: Can you really taste flavor notes in cigars? If you've ever wondered about this yourself or have bickered with someone about this topic, check out our conversation and let us know your take in the comments.

[Tyler Caldwell]: I've noticed lately a lot of controversy on the topic of flavor notes in your tobacco, particularly cigars. This is a topic that has probably been controversial for a long time, but what I've seen through social media lately is that there's been quite the buzz going on, so we just wanna weigh in on some opinions and what we feel about that.

Enjoying Your Cigar Matters Most

[Alan Britt]: Yeah. From my understanding, flavor notes were brought into cigars in the early '90s with the emergence of Cigar Aficionado and magazines and such. Before, it more so applied to wine tasting.

Contrary to what a lot of people would say, I don't necessarily get those things in wine. I think so much of it has to do with being taught how to unlock those flavors you're tasting, or you could believe it's all a load of bologna and think that we're lying straight to your faces.

[TC]: Well, to go along with that right there, I've always seen this topic as a double-edged sword because on one hand, if you don't get flavor notes or what I should say is like additional essential flavors to your cigar, you're gonna get all these aficionados who are gonna say you don't know what you're doing. On the other hand, if I do come out and say, I get all these types of flavors, you're going to get the other side of the pendulum with the folks who are gonna say you're just using this as like a marketing ploy.

I think where that controversy comes in is that I can smoke something, you can smoke something, but we can get two completely different things. It's the same with anyone who's watching this. We can talk about these cigars here in a minute. But we're gonna go into the fact that our tastes are different. Your tastes are different. This is a product that you spent your hard-earned money on. We don't have to agree with each other. At the end of the day, as long as what's in your hand that you're smoking is something that you enjoy, that's all that really matters.

RoMa Craft's Quality and Affordability

Let's go into a little bit of what we're smoking here. Right now, we're both smoking the RoMa Craft Intemperance Whiskey Rebellion line.

[AB]: We chose this for a reason, also.

[TC]: We did.

[AB]: We won't get into it right now, but shout out to Skip Martin of RoMa Craft.

[TC]: That's right. To me, this is a very underrated cigar. RoMa Craft is a very interesting company. Their business philosophies and ideas of what they put out there and how much information they put out there are less about the story, but more about the industry and transparency.

[AB]: I think you could sum it up by saying that their goal is to put out very good cigars at a reasonable price point for people who are smoking cigars every day.

[TC]: Right. Today, unfortunately, everything's going up in price, and it's not really going down. RoMa Craft always prides themselves on that factor there. They make something that's really good quality and strive to make it less expensive, to the best of their ability.

[AB]: They use really simplistic packaging. You're never gonna look at a RoMa Craft product and think it's some extravagant packaging that you're paying for as the end consumer.

[TC]: They believe that less is more, with a minimalist look to it, but still artistic in their own way.

RoMa Craft Intemperance Whiskey Rebellion Cigars

What's interesting about this is we're both smoking Whiskey Rebellion, but in two different sizes.

[AB]: I'm smoking my personal favorite: a little 4" x 44. It's an absolute killer and a staple in my humidor. I keep a box of these around.

[TC]: That's right. It is a great cigar because it's smaller. If you only have thirty minutes to kill, you can bang one out, but it's also good enough to where you could probably smoke that cigar for like a good hour plus, if you smoke slowly. Unfortunately, I don't.

I picked their newest size, the Tully, which RoMa Craft is introducing to all their lines. This is a 6" x 54 Toro.

[AB]: That's a chunky Toro.

[TC]: I personally have not tried this size yet, so I wanted to go with something different to really drive home our opinions with the aspect of flavor notes. Is it bullshit or is it not? I wanna see if what you taste in that size and what I taste in this size is either similar or different.

[AB]: Getting into this Intemperance Whiskey Rebellion, personally, I've always been reminded of figs. Straight up Fig Newton, if I'm being honest. I'm getting this bready, figgy flavor that is slightly chocolatey. I'm very curious to see if you find something similar in the Toro.

[TC]: Normally, I would probably agree with you because that size cigar is the one I gravitate towards. But with this one, I can't really say I get that. Maybe a touch on that bready note. To me, especially on the retrohale, I'm getting a ton more woodsy pepperiness that I can't really pinpoint yet. On the figgy note, not at all with this guy.

[AB]: I'm interested to try that vitola because it's so prominent in this size and especially on the retrohale, the mixture of that fig note I get with quite a lot of pepper, which you did say you're getting pepper, on the retrohale, is pretty overwhelming at times with the smaller size.

[TC]: I would say with the pepper note that I get, it's a little more subtle, and that could be because of the size difference. Maybe there's a touch more filler going into it compared to that size there.

I like the way that we're describing these flavors because that kind of hones in on the whole topic of the controversy of flavor notes. There are a lot of folks out there who believe that when you talk about flavor notes, tobacco simply tastes like tobacco. I've always referred to something like the flavor wheel to help explain it with basic things like your creamy sweet, your woodsy earthy, your peppery spicy, and so forth. Then it dives into more pinpointed flavors that you get.

[AB]: More minute details. If you're tasting wood, is it cedary, oaky? And obviously you're not tasting those things. Nobody's going in the forest and chomping on oak trees.

[TC]: You could, it might be something interesting for you.

[AB]: It is tasting those things and then being reminiscent of a time when you have experienced that in the past, like with your sense of smell. Smell is a vast majority of taste. I don't have the stats, but trust me. We've all had a cold and tried to eat soup and it's like eating water, basically.

[TC]: I've had a cold where my sinuses are so plugged up, and I tried to smoke a cigar, and it tasted like I was licking an ashtray clean. And that's not good.

[AB]: It's no fun. So much of your taste relies on smell. I use it for pipe tobacco all the time. For example, with my favorite blend, Mad Fiddler Flake from Cornell & Diehl, the first time I ever opened that tin, it quite literally took me back to sitting in my grandmother's kitchen and her making pie. There is no pie flavoring, there's no apple flavoring in that tobacco. It simply took me on an olfactory journey back to that moment. It's the same application for cigars.

[TC]: I'm really glad you brought that up because something I've always liked to discuss with people is when I describe a cigar, I don't like to say, "this tastes like...," instead, I like to say, "this reminds me of..." because, to me, I can smoke something and if I do get this kind of off-the-wall flavor that is beyond the norm of what you should maybe potentially be getting normally, I'm being reminded of an experience of a certain food that I ate that, just for whatever reason this cigar is triggering my mind to think of that memory or it's reminded me of an experience that I had that just all kind of intertwines.

I think with the controversy of flavor notes with tobacco and cigars in particular, there's a misunderstanding there. I'm not thinking of the actual taste of, say, Cheetos dust or a vanilla cupcake. I'm thinking of an experience, if that makes sense.

[AB]: Yeah, totally. It's a recollection of all these experiences you've had in your life. I equate it to the sensation of smelling laundry detergent that's scented outdoor rain or whatever. You smell that and might think of a trip to the mountains you took.

[TC]: Exactly, it's just that experience that triggers the flavor you associate with it.

More Smoking Experience Develops Your Palate

When I think of the times that I started noticing and picking up more flavors — Granted, I've been smoking cigars for way too long. I smoke way too many cigars.

[AB]: No, you're good.

[TC]: I remember smoking cigars, and I really liked them because I liked the feeling of the smoke in my mouth. I liked the flavors that I got, but it was also that sense of not understanding the flavor I was getting. I probably smoked cigars for six-to-eight years before I learned how to retrohale. Shout out to Tim Vanderpool, if you're watching, for guilt tripping me into learning how to retrohale.

[AB]: It's also a game changer for tasting tobacco. It opens an entire new world.

[TC]: I will admit, it sucked learning how to retrohale at first. That burning, I don't wanna say sensation, because it was not sensational to get used to, but I overcame that and it opened up my ability for my palate to taste more.

I started going back to cigars that for years I said, this cigar sucks and I'll never smoke it again. Then I start smoking, and I'm like, I can't believe I've missed out on this for so many years. For the folks watching who believe that they don't get all these crazy flavors you hear about, which is completely fine, if you don't retrohale, you should learn how to do it. It can really help you to understand your palate, and maybe you won't get more flavors, but maybe you'll get more intensified flavors of what you already are getting, but don't know how to identify.

[AB]: It's all about bringing it back to your olfactory senses. All of these senses in your nasal passages can increase taste far more than your palate can.

[TC]: I look at opening your palate in comparison to generic cheese, like Kraft American slices, which are great on a grilled cheese, to evolving into more fine cheeses, with more intense flavors. Cigars are similar; if you're used to the sliced cheese, you might not want to dive into more intense flavors with more fancy cheeses. But when you do, you start tasting them and seeing that you might have been missing out all these years.

[AB]: Yeah, and as far as discovering that flavor and how to pick these things out, from my experience, and I think it's similar to a lot of new smokers, you might read these flavor notes, and reviews, and you see these people tasting these things and you don't get them, there might be this hesitation that there's something wrong with you. I very much experienced that.

When I first started smoking, I was, much like many other cigar smokers, super into flavored cigars or infused cigars. I think it makes it easier because you're focused on a predominant flavor already. If this is coffee flavored, you're going to taste coffee, and you don't necessarily have to think about it. But reading those reviews put this insecurity in me for a long time that there was something wrong with me.

It wasn't until I became more comfortable and just got into the mindset of if I spend $10 on this cigar, I'm just going to enjoy it, and however I enjoy it is right.

In that way, I started discovering these things slowly and by using a flavor wheel. For example, I would see woodsy and think, yeah, I can get the woodsy note in this. I didn't have to sit there and say it was aged bog oak. It was just woodsy. And that's fine.

[TC]: And that's completely fine. Absolutely. On the topic of reviews and stuff, I was in that same boat where I would read reviews and think, What is wrong with me? Why don't I taste these things? Eventually, I just started not caring. I respected the people who were doing those reviews, and I respected their taste and their palate and their knowledge, but I wasn't respecting mine. I started to smoke the cigar first, and then read the review and do some comparisons.

It comes with experience, and it comes with just training your palate, which I don't know if that's something that every cigar smoker can do, which is completely fine, but it's also training yourself to taste how you want to taste, if that makes sense.

[AB]: Yeah. I started smoking cigars because of my grandfather. I would see him smoke cigars when I was a kid, and it's really what inspired me to smoke my first one. I never once heard him say that he was tasting dark chocolate and candied bacon. He smoked cigars. He enjoyed them. And to use some youthful language, it just ain't that deep. It's okay to just enjoy things at a base level. If you want to dive into it, if you want to be able to dissect these cigars, training your palate from experience is probably gonna be the best way.

[TC]: It ain't that deep, but it's only as deep as you want it to be.

[AB]: Boom.

[TC]: That's philosophy right there, baby. At the end of the day, the cigar that you're smoking is what you enjoy or it's not. There are plenty of other options out there to sample and smoke. The cigar you're smoking is what it means to you. It also comes with that experience.

Hopefully, this has touched a little bit on such a controversial topic. My question to you watching this, do you get flavors or do you think it's all a bunch of shit?

[AB]: Yeah. Tell us in the comments.