YOUR PALATE IS NOT BORN. IT IS TRAINED.
After enough attentive smoking, what once registered simply as “cigar” begins separating into individual impressions: cedar, leather, earth, espresso, cocoa, nuts, pepper, cream, dried fruit, toast and spices. The cigar did not suddenly become more complicated. You became better at noticing it.
That distinction matters at The Airways Club, because cigar appreciation is not supposed to be a race toward identifying the largest number of tasting notes. It is about becoming more attentive to what is actually happening in the cigar in front of you.
The vocabulary surrounding cigars is enormous. Cigar Aficionado’s cigar glossary alone separates concepts such as aroma, blend, draw and vitola—a reminder that experienced cigar smokers are paying attention to much more than whether a cigar is simply “good” or “bad.”
At The Airways Club, that is where the experience becomes interesting.
SLOW DOWN. THE CIGAR IS ALREADY DOING ENOUGH.
One of the easiest ways to miss a cigar is to smoke it while doing five other things.
Phone in one hand. Laptop open. Television playing. Conversation half-heard. Cigar being puffed every few seconds.
You are technically smoking it, but you may not really be tasting it.
The first lesson in palate development is therefore almost embarrassingly simple: slow down.
Cigar construction itself is layered. The wrapper, binder and filler work together as part of the cigar's blend. Even apparently simple characteristics such as the ash and the cigar's resistance on the draw can become part of how an experienced smoker evaluates the session.
Leave some time between draws. Let the cigar rest. Notice whether the smoke is becoming warmer. Ask yourself whether the character you noticed in the opening inch is still present halfway through.
This is not pretension. It is attention.
And attention is what turns smoking into tasting.
YOUR NOSE MAY BE TASTING MORE THAN YOUR TONGUE
Here is where cigar appreciation becomes scientifically interesting.
We casually describe cedar, coffee or cocoa as things we “taste,” but human flavor perception is substantially influenced by smell. Research indexed by the National Library of Medicine on retronasal flavor perception explains that olfaction is critical to the overall perception of flavor. Another review distinguishes orthonasal and retronasal odor perception: aromas can reach the olfactory system through the nose from the outside world or from the mouth during exhalation.
That helps explain why cigar enthusiasts talk about retrohaling.
Rather than inhaling cigar smoke into the lungs, retrohaling involves allowing some smoke to move through the nasal passage during exhalation. The sensory principle behind it is real: scientific literature describes retronasal olfaction as an important component of flavor perception, and studies have found distinct processing of retronasal versus orthonasal aromas. PubMed
But there is an important distinction: understanding flavor does not make cigar smoke harmless. The CDC's cigar guidance states that cigar smoke contains toxic and cancer-causing chemicals and that exposure occurs even among people who report not inhaling.
READ THE REVIEW. THEN FORGET THE REVIEW.
Professional reviews can teach you language.
That is valuable.
If an experienced reviewer describes a cigar using words you have never associated with tobacco—walnut, baking spice, espresso, leather, dried cherry, white pepper—you suddenly have additional reference points to consider.
Resources such as Cigar Aficionado and Holts Clubhouse's Cigar 101 can help build that vocabulary. Understanding terms such as hand-rolled and learning more about cigar wrapper colors can also make you more observant before the cigar is even lit.
But there is a trap.
Someone writes “dark chocolate,” and suddenly you are desperately searching for dark chocolate.
Don't.
Flavor perception is individual. Scientific research itself describes flavor as a highly individual sensation influenced by multiple factors. PubMed
If the reviewer finds chocolate and you find roasted coffee, write down coffee.
Your objective is not to pass somebody else's cigar exam.
It is to understand your own palate.
KEEP A CIGAR JOURNAL—BECAUSE YOUR MEMORY IS A TERRIBLE HUMIDOR
This may be the least glamorous advice in cigar culture and one of the most useful.
Write it down.
Brand. Line. Vitola. Wrapper. Approximate smoking time. Draw. Construction. Strength. Aroma. First third. Second third. Final third. Drink pairing. What you liked. What you didn't.
Even something as fundamental as understanding the role of a humidor or how cigars are traditionally presented in a box contributes to a larger understanding of the product before it reaches your chair.
After 20 or 30 journal entries, patterns begin becoming visible.
Perhaps you repeatedly gravitate toward certain wrappers. Maybe you prefer smaller formats in the morning and larger ones later. Perhaps a cigar you considered too strong six months ago suddenly feels balanced.
That is your palate developing in writing.
COFFEE AT 10 A.M. IS NOT WHISKEY AT 7 P.M.
At The Airways Club, pairing can become part of the experiment.
But the objective should not be to find the most expensive drink available. It should be to understand what the beverage does to your perception of the cigar.
Start with the most neutral pairing of all: water.
It gives you a baseline.
Then try coffee. Black coffee can provide roasted reference points that make cocoa, earth, nut and espresso-like impressions easier to compare. Tea can provide a different, often less aggressive background.
Later, an adult smoker who drinks alcohol might compare the cigar alongside rum, bourbon or whisky—but deliberately, not automatically.
Take the same cigar and change the beverage. Ask what disappeared. Ask what became more noticeable.
There is actual sensory science behind the idea that one stimulus can affect another: research on taste and retronasal odor interactions has shown that taste can alter perceived odor intensity.
The lesson for the cigar smoker is straightforward:
The pairing is part of the experiment.
IF THE CIGAR GETS HOT, YOU MAY BE TASTING YOUR IMPATIENCE
There is another mistake that can make a good cigar seem worse than it is: smoking too aggressively.
A cigar is combustion. Puffing repeatedly increases heat. And once the experience becomes dominated by excessive heat and harshness, subtlety becomes harder to notice.
Holts' introductory material on how to enjoy a cigar emphasizes the deliberate nature of cigar smoking, while its broader cigar lounge etiquette guide provides useful context for enjoying cigars in a shared lounge environment.
Watch the burn.
Notice the smoke.
Pay attention to the temperature.
And don't turn the cigar into a stopwatch competition.
A cigar going out occasionally is less tragic than destroying its character because you are determined to keep it blazing every second.
DON'T JUST TASTE THE CIGAR. READ IT.
A cigar communicates through more than flavor.
Look at it. Examine the wrapper before lighting. Observe its texture and construction.
Smell it. Notice the unlit tobacco and the aroma around the cigar after lighting.
Touch it. Gently evaluate its firmness and construction.
Watch it. Follow the burn line and ash as the session progresses.
Taste it. Notice what appears, disappears and returns.
Listen. Yes, listen—to the room, the conversation and yourself. Cigar appreciation is partly sensory precisely because it forces you to stop treating every minute as something that needs to be optimized.
The more you understand about the physical cigar—the vitola, its blend, its wrapper and its draw—the easier it becomes to separate construction from flavor preference.
BUILD A FLAVOR LIBRARY OUTSIDE THE HUMIDOR
If you want to recognize cedar, smell cedar.
If you want to understand black pepper, compare freshly cracked black pepper with white pepper.
Taste almonds, walnuts, dark chocolate, espresso, dried fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg and citrus peel deliberately.
Smell leather. Fresh coffee. Toast. Wood. Herbs.
This is not about convincing yourself that every cigar contains 17 flavors.
It is about creating sensory reference points.
Research into the relationship among smell, flavor and taste explains why this vocabulary can become complicated: what people casually call “taste” frequently incorporates substantial olfactory information.
Your brain needs something to compare an aroma against before you can easily name it.
Experience supplies the dictionary.
SMOKE THE SAME CIGAR TWICE
One of the best palate exercises requires no exotic cigar at all.
Smoke the same cigar on different days.
The first time, drink water.
The second time, have coffee.
Or smoke one in the morning and another in the evening.
Do not assume they will seem identical.
Your environment, what you recently ate or drank, the cigar's condition, your expectations and your own sensory state can all affect the experience. That is precisely why a journal becomes useful.
For smokers still learning how to choose cigars, Holts offers a practical introduction to shopping for cigars, while Cigar Aficionado's glossary provides additional reference material for understanding the terminology encountered along the way.
THE AIRWAYS CLUB ADVANTAGE: YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEARN ALONE
There is something the internet cannot reproduce particularly well.
The man sitting in the chair next to you.
A review can tell you what one writer experienced. A video can demonstrate technique. A tasting wheel can give you vocabulary.
But sitting with other cigar smokers allows a completely different kind of comparison.
“What are you getting?”
“Pepper.”
“I get cedar.”
“Try it again after the coffee.”
That conversation is part of cigar culture.
It is also one reason The Airways Club is more than somewhere to light a cigar. It is a private environment where adult members can slow down, work, talk, compare experiences and develop their own understanding of cigars.
Miami provides an unusually interesting setting for that kind of club. Coral Gables Economic Development describes the city's business environment, while the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District represents the commercial ecosystem on the Grove side of our location.
And the broader Miami economy is deeply international. Miami-Dade International Trade and the Miami-Dade Beacon Council illustrate the region's connection to global commerce.
That makes the crossroads of Coral Gables and Coconut Grove an appropriate place for something deliberately slower.
THE FINAL LESSON: STOP TRYING SO HARD TO BE AN EXPERT
A developed palate is not the ability to announce twelve tasting notes before the ash reaches an inch.
It is the ability to notice.
To remember.
To compare.
To recognize what you enjoy.
And occasionally to admit:
“I have absolutely no idea what that flavor is—but I like it.”
That may be a more useful sign of palate development than pretending every cigar contains Madagascar vanilla, 72-percent cacao and leather from a 1964 Italian briefcase.
The ritual becomes richer when the vocabulary grows, but the vocabulary should never become more important than the cigar.
At The Airways Club, we prefer the simpler philosophy:
DON'T JUST SMOKE THE CIGAR. LEARN TO READ IT.
Take your time. Pay attention. Compare notes. Have the conversation.
And then light another one another day and discover that you notice something you completely missed the first time.
For adult cigar smokers interested in the club, visit The Airways Club. New membership inquiries are open for December 2026.
THE AIRWAYS CLUBCIGARS. CONVERSATION. CONFIDENTIALITY.
For adults 21+. Cigar smoking carries serious health risks; cigar smoke contains toxic and cancer-causing chemicals, according to the CDC. CDC
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