Knowing What You Like

[planetary]

My tastes have changed, too. I cellared some Latakia blends early on, despite not being deeply interested in them. Now I find myself interested in things more cyclically (though I don't smoke very much at all, because of the kids), so I am glad to have a fairly broad cellar.

If you're the kind of smoker who is heavily into routine and fixed tastes, then having a very focused cellar, perhaps on one style, or a handful of blends, or even ONE blend, might make sense. But if you enjoy new experiences and experimentation, then a more broad cellar might indeed make sense. Even in my cellar, with dozens of blends in stock, I have focused somewhat on (1) GLP mixtures, because they're so intriguing and amazing (2) virginia blends because they age so damn well.

 

[gilgawulf]

@ Yak:
I've been trying, and enjoying, a lot of the various blends that either claim to be a close replica of or have been written up as tasting like one of the three Balkan Sobranie blends. From what I gather, Balkan Sobranie stopped being Balkan Sobranie just a year or two before I was born (the same apparently happened with all the Dunhill blends around the same time), and the replicas are based on samples from afterwards. This leads me to two conclusions: 1) whatever the real Balkan Sobranie tasted like, it must have been one hell of a tobacco for the blends modeled on a pale shade of it to taste as good as they do, and 2) when it all comes down to it, I think I find the most enjoyment evaluating a blend on its own merits.

 

[PreppyHippy]

I started by buying the bulk blends that made me salivate when I smelled them in the tobacconist's jars. Those were the ones that made me itch to smoke them. Wish I'd still get that feeling as often as I used to, and I wish I could experience those smoking journeys all afresh and all anew again.