This post borrows a lot from this article as well as my own personal experiences: http://www.stogiefresh.com/journal/Cigar_Journal/Cigar_Science/Entries/2007/8/29_Great_Expectations%3A_What_Do_Blind_Cigar_Reviews_Really_Tell_Us.html - This is great article on Cigar blind taste testing.
A lot of the cigars on this blog are ones that I have written after doing a blind taste test(BTT) where the band of the cigar is removed and I have no knowledge of the cigar or what it is prior to smoking. However, how effective are these blind taste tests for cigar smokers?
Perception and expectations are very important in any taste test and blind taste testing for cigars tries to eliminate any perception or framing as a potential bias. The taste of the cigar is tied to your perceptions and expectations of the cigar, which are heavily influenced by price, rarity, manufacturer, country of origin, band/box design. A BTT tries to eliminate these perceptions/expectations by removing these factors because they are perceived as bias that detracts from the cigars inate qualities.
My personal problem with a lot of blind taste tests is sample size. The ones I do are pretty much just for fun, not research or serious study, and should be taken with a grain of salt. To get a good accurate taste profile for a particular cigar you would have to smoke many samples, a safe bet for me would be about 10 or 15, before you can come to a good conclusion (ideally the sample size would be even larger, but I'm being realistic). One cannot really deduce a cigars taste after one or two samplings, that's why almost all of the sticks that I do smoke blind and consider buying I continue sampling a couple more before committing to a box.
Another issue with blind taste testing is that in a 'real world application' of smoking cigars you almost never smoke cigars blind. When you go to a tobacco shop or buy cigars online you don't buy them with some sort of expectations or perceptions. Conducting a blind taste test of every cigar you try just isn't practicle.
A big problem I have seen in blind taste testing is that people don't do it blinded or blind folded! You might laugh, but visual cues can significantly help determine what a cigar is and create perceptions. For example, many Cuban cigars have a distinctive triple cap on the head of the cigar and in BTT's for guessing country of origin people often create perceptions based on these visual cues, which might still be incorrect because a lot of non-Cuban manufacturers also now make cigars with a triple cap.
Our very underdeveloped and untrained palates and sense of taste are also stumbling blocks to blind taste testing. In my personal experience out of the 50 or 60 cigars that I have smoked in blind taste tests, I have only gotten two completely correct. This was due to visual clues and rote memorization of the taste, not my tasting ability. I had smoked so many of these cigars I had memorized the taste. A lot of people claim to be able to taste differences between cigars, but I have seen a lot of 'experienced' and 'unexperienced' smokers fall flat on their faces in BTTs. It takes a lot of training and hard work to be able to taste at a professional level, and even then it's still hit or miss sometimes. Also, our sense of taste and what we enjoy is different for every individual. Taste is extremely subjective and I have seen countless reviews of the same cigar that aren't even minutely close to one another.
In short, blind taste testing can be fun, but if you are only tasting one or two cigars it might not be that helpful. What's good for me may not be good for you and vice versa. Blind cigar tasting is really applicable because we almost never encounter it when actually smoking cigars. I hope that I have helped with the problems surrounding blind taste testing.
Here are some links for further reading:
http://www.puff.com/forums/vb/general-cigar-discussion/130048-great-moki-challenge-begins.html
This is a rather lengthy thread at a cigar forum where I used to participate, but has a lot of insight on the subjectivity and innaccuracy of tasting in any form.
http://www.stogiefresh.com/journal/Cigar_Journal/Cigar_Science/Entries/2007/8/29_Great_Expectations%3A_What_Do_Blind_Cigar_Reviews_Really_Tell_Us.html
The same article at the beginning of the post, great reading!
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