Can a Cigar Smoker’s Palate Change Over Time?

It’s natural for a cigar smoker’s palate to change over time. If you’ve ever smoked the same cigar two days in a row, loved it on the first day, and not so much the second, it could be that your palate has changed. Two of the same cigars can taste different based on the chemistry in your mouth. What you eat before smoking, the type of spirit you pair with a cigar, and whether it’s your first cigar of the day, all affect the way it tastes, for example. Stay hydrated to savor more nuances in a cigar’s profile. The factors that influence how a cigar tastes can be subtle or situational. They can also indicate changes in your personal preferences, as you become more experienced.

Factors That Affect a Smoker’s Palate

Most cigar lovers start with mild beginner blends as they acquire a taste for premium handmade cigars. But as we develop our palates, our curiosity for stronger, more complex blends kicks in. Our tolerance for full-bodied cigars also increases. Sometimes, we use specific culinary tasting notes to define a cigar’s flavor profile, but taste is personal. So, you shouldn’t feel pressure to perceive the exact flavors as someone else.

Our palates and olfactory senses change as we grow older. We’re born with approximately 10,000 taste buds that heighten our perception of bitter, sweet, sour, and salty flavors. After 40, we tend to crave stronger, more intense flavors in our food as our taste buds shift. Similarly, it’s normal for cigar enthusiasts to gravitate towards cigars with sharper flavor and intensity over time. That doesn’t mean strong cigars are for everyone. Smoking strong cigars can also reinforce an appreciation for the milder ones. Let’s look at some common stages in the evolution of a cigar lover’s palate.

Mild Cigars: The Beginner’s Journey

You’re in the majority if your first cigar was a Macanudo Café, Ashton Classic, or Montecristo. There is a good reason these creamy, mild, and iconic blends are sold in nearly every premium retailer worldwide. They offer an accessible introduction to cigar smoking, with high-quality, aged tobacco and consistent flavor and performance that you can rely on. These mellow smokes encourage new cigar lovers to enjoy smoking for the taste and aroma, without overwhelming them with too much nicotine.

Many classic mild cigars are blended with a Connecticut wrapper leaf, often characterized by approachable tasting notes of cashew, cedar, almond, coffee bean, and white pepper. You can’t always tell if a cigar is mild by looking at it, but you can use essential details, such as its blend of tobaccos, wrapper leaf, and the cigarmaker who blended it, to narrow down other new cigars to explore.  

Intermediate Medium-Bodied Cigars

There are hundreds of versatile, medium-bodied cigars that appeal to the greatest number of consumers. Serious connoisseurs traditionally enjoy a wide range of cigars from different countries and tobacco-growing regions, with unique wrapper varietals and varying strengths.

A cigar’s wrapper leaf plays a vital role in its flavor and strength. When moving beyond a traditional Connecticut Shade wrapper, there are several savory and accessible blends to try with different wrappers.

Ashton Aged Maduro delivers dark, sweet notes of almond, molasses, maple, and black pepper, courtesy of its toothy Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. Arturo Fuente Hemingway cigars are handcrafted in a series of meticulous Perfectos, finished in an authentic Cameroon wrapper that imparts notes of chestnut, cedar, and cinnamon, with hints of baking spices and coffee bean. Ashton and Arturo Fuente are two of the highest-rated and bestselling Dominican brands in the world.

Hailing from Nicaragua, the 95-rated La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor develops with notes of dark chocolate, almond, espresso bean, and black pepper, with an oily San Andrés wrapper. And San Cristobal Revelation imparts a mouthwatering profile of almond, cedar, cinnamon, cocoa, and pepper, courtesy of an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper leaf. Renowned cigarmaker Jose ‘Pepin’ Garcia blends and produces both La Aroma de Cuba and San Cristobal cigars.

Becoming a Connoisseur of Stronger Cigars

Gradually work your way up to stronger cigars. Powerful and spicy smokes, like My Father Le Bijou 1922, La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero, Ashton VSG, and La Aroma de Cuba Noblesse, require more experience to appreciate fully. They’re draped in thick, oily wrappers that deliver profound flavor and harbor significant amounts of nicotine. That’s why you should save stronger cigars for after dinner. Robust notes of leather, cedar, anise, black pepper, hickory, espresso, and spice resonate throughout a long, lingering finish in many of today’s strongest blends.

Frequency of Cigar Smoking

Smoking cigars more often also changes our palates. You may only smoke cigars on special occasions at first. Lots of aficionados get hooked on a good blend after enjoying it at a wedding or on vacation. They find ways to integrate cigar smoking into their free time more regularly, whether it’s setting up a smoking room at home or bringing cigars to the golf course.

When your consumption increases from multiple cigars per month to multiple cigars per week or even per day, it’s natural to seek more variety in the blends you enjoy. As an aficionado builds a cigar collection, they’ll include milder cigars for the morning, medium-bodied cigars that they can share with a variety of friends, and stronger, after-dinner cigars that pair with good whiskey.

If you smoke multiple times a day, it’s important to cleanse your palate in between cigars to get the most taste from a cigar. Keep a cigar journal and take pics of your favorite cigars. Knowing what you’ve smoked and how much you enjoyed it are essential as you refine your palate and fill your humidor with the good stuff.