Episode 78
Should You Smell Your Cigar? | Box Press Shorts Ep. 78
The nose knows! Learn why people smell cigar smoke. Hear how smoking experts judge the aroma of a cigar. Try this new cigar smoking technique to appreciate your next smoke even more.
Guest: Altadis Cigars’ National Education Manager and Smoke Tester, Travis Pappenheim
Boveda Box Hosts: Rob Gagner and Nate Beck
More with cigar smokers, Travis, Rob and Nate here:
What Are You Tasting in a Cigar?
https://vimeo.com/776275750
How Cigar Flavor Stimulates Memory https://vimeo.com/778566812
How to Taste Cigars—Using What's in Your House! https://vimeo.com/778566962
Learning How to Taste Cigars at a Higher Level https://vimeo.com/740951214
Cigar talk highlights:
00:00 Cold open
00:03 Cigar lounge conversations you’ll probably never hear
00:25 Your cigar palate isn’t the same as the guy next to you
01:38 Learn a technique for smelling cigar smoke
02:58 When and when not to waft cigar smoke
Website: https://www.bovedainc.com/
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Transcript
(jazz music)
Speaker:- I've never gone to a shop and had guys go,
Speaker:well I tell you what, we had six of us around,
Speaker:we were all doing flavor notes,
Speaker:oh, it's changed to this, changed to this.
Speaker:No. - No.
Speaker:- [Travis] It's, Rob what do you like out of that?
Speaker:- Yeah.
Speaker:- [Travis] Or what do you not like about that?
Speaker:You know, what do you think of that?
Speaker:What notes do you get?
Speaker:You know, you know what flavor notes do you get?
Speaker:Because I am really off by earth.
Speaker:- [Rob] No. - Yeah.
Speaker:- Although there's certain cigars where I'm like,
Speaker:whoa, that is way too spicy, like black pepper
Speaker:for me is like, oh, that is way too much.
Speaker:- Mhmm.
Speaker:- But you just said that was a turnoff for you.
Speaker:And if you smoked a cigar like the Trinidad Espiritu
Speaker:Number 2 using that Arapiraca from Brazil.
Speaker:If you'd smoked that, you'd say,
Speaker:there's a lot of black peppers in this.
Speaker:- [Nate] Mhmm.
Speaker:- There's like whole pepper corn cracked and it's got
Speaker:that rich black pepperiness.
Speaker:You don't like that.
Speaker:But I would be listening to you going,
Speaker:I kind of like that, man.
Speaker:I might actually want one of those
Speaker:because that one then intrigues me.
Speaker:- [Nate] Yes.
Speaker:- Because we all like different things.
Speaker:- [Nate] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Rob] I see what I think happens though is that I'll say,
Speaker:oh, I didn't really like that cigar.
Speaker:And you'll say, well why didn't you like it?
Speaker:And I'll say, I don't know,
Speaker:I just didn't like the flavor of it.
Speaker:You know, my palate is just like sensitive to that maybe.
Speaker:- [Nate] Yeah.
Speaker:- And yours may not be so,
Speaker:when somebody says, I didn't really like that cigar,
Speaker:I don't always take that as like, I may not like it.
Speaker:Like, we're just different.
Speaker:- [Nate] Right.
Speaker:- You know, like, I don't know.
Speaker:There's just a thing where I'm not too worried
Speaker:about the flavor notes.
Speaker:I'm more worried about the construction.
Speaker:How well does it burn, how balanced is it?
Speaker:Like even this as I smell it, as it burns
Speaker:it smells so aromatic. It's so good smelling.
Speaker:And for me, that's part of the experience.
Speaker:- [Travis] Well, we hadn't really talked about this
Speaker:but it was another idea I thought of
Speaker:that we could do another episode on
Speaker:or we could give everybody that's watching
Speaker:and stuck with us, a little bonus.
Speaker:- How do you actually--
Speaker:- Let's give them the bonus.
Speaker:- We say there's aromas in cigars.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah.
Speaker:- Obviously you don't want to be in a windy situation,
Speaker:but what's the good technique you wanna do
Speaker:to actually catch an aroma off the cigar you smoke?
Speaker:A lot of people I've seen that say I wanna smell the aromas
Speaker:they're trying to loft that smoke
Speaker:directly into their nasal cavity.
Speaker:You don't want that smoke.
Speaker:You want the byproduct of that smoke.
Speaker:- [Rob] See now when I waft it my direction
Speaker:I get better hits of that aroma and I love that.
Speaker:- A lot of the master blenders in that have been old timers
Speaker:that I've been watching for years,
Speaker:they've got certain techniques and as a lover of tobacco
Speaker:and the history and the story
Speaker:of the love that goes into these things,
Speaker:that's what I fell in love with from the beginning
Speaker:26 years ago.
Speaker:So to me, I still have that love and passion.
Speaker:So I watch these guys and go, what are they doing? Why?
Speaker:And eventually it'll hit my slow mind to say
Speaker:here's the association, here's how to do it.
Speaker:So we all do kind of the same thing.
Speaker:You don't want to do the smoke that you're exhausting
Speaker:from your mouth.
Speaker:That's a spent oils.
Speaker:You're depositing some of those oils,
Speaker:they're not rich in there.
Speaker:- Yep.
Speaker:- But just after you release that smoke,
Speaker:you see a lot of the guys doing this.
Speaker:They're not trying to--
Speaker:- Wafting it, wafting the cigar moving it in the air.
Speaker:- Yep.
Speaker:- Just a little bit of that--
Speaker:- Seeing what works better for me is just wafting my hand
Speaker:over the cigar, like waving that smoke up.
Speaker:Kind of dispersing--
Speaker:- [Travis] As it's smoking,
Speaker:you just want to kind of get that--
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Travis] So it dissipates, so it's not direct smoke,
Speaker:but it's the leftover aroma.
Speaker:- It's like the aroma of a fire from a block away.
Speaker:- [Travis] I was just gonna mention that.
Speaker:- Yeah. - [Travis] Yeah.
Speaker:You don't want to say a campfire smells good
Speaker:when you're "feets" away from it.
Speaker:- [Nate] Right, no.
Speaker:- Because eventually it's gonna come back,
Speaker:it's gonna hit you.
Speaker:- [Rob] Right.
Speaker:- No matter where you move that smoke's gonna follow it.
Speaker:It's, we've all been there.
Speaker:- [Rob] Yeah.
Speaker:- This is, as you're walking in.
Speaker:- It's always the best.
Speaker:- [Travis] Yeah.
Speaker:- [Nate] Yeah, when you catch it from like
Speaker:a couple blocks away
Speaker:and you start looking around, who's got a fire going?
Speaker:Oh my gosh, that smells amazing.
Speaker:- I do that when somebody's smoking a cigar.
Speaker:- Oh yeah.
Speaker:- Like... - Where are they?
Speaker:- I was around, I was outside and it was at a baseball game
Speaker:and the ump was like,
Speaker:you're the guy that was making it smell so good.
Speaker:And like, it's funny because then I met somebody
Speaker:who was like, oh could you not smoke around me?
Speaker:Like those are total polar opposites
Speaker:but that ump is a cigar smoker.
Speaker:And he was like, ah man, that's making me really
Speaker:want a cigar right now.
Speaker:- I love that.
Speaker:- And I just, that's like, ah yeah, yeah.
