Talking about cigars without the vocabulary trap
Naming a flavour is a skill. Requiring the name is a social filter.
You do not need the words to have the experience. Descriptive vocabulary is a tool for comparing notes with other people; it is not a qualification for enjoying tobacco, and treating it as one keeps good company away.
What the vocabulary is for
Shared reference points. If two people both mean roughly the same thing by "cedar", they can compare experiences without smoking the same cigar. That is genuinely useful and it is the only thing the vocabulary does.
What it does not do is measure anything. Nobody's palate is more correct for having more words attached to it.
Building your own instead
Use comparisons to things you actually know: "like the smell of a hardware shop", "sweeter than the last one", "the same bitterness as over-brewed tea". These are more precise than borrowed wine language, because they refer to something you have really tasted.
Do this: when you cannot name a flavour, write what it reminds you of instead. Nobody else needs to understand your note — and if you publish a review later, a comparison translates better than a noun anyway.
The social part
There is a version of cigar conversation that exists to establish rank, and it is boring. The reliable sign is somebody describing a cigar in adjectives while telling you nothing you could act on. Ask them whether they would buy it again; the answer is usually more interesting than the paragraph.
If you want the words
They come from smoking attentively, not from lists. Most people find that after thirty or forty recorded cigars the vocabulary arrives on its own, attached to specific memories rather than to a wheel.
One free-text field, no vocabulary required
The entry screen has a score out of ten and one note field. There is no list of prescribed descriptors to pick from, because the useful note is the one in your own words — and that is the note that still means something to you a year later.
Read next
Tasting-note clichés, and what to write instead
Every word below is true of half the cigars you have smoked. That is the problem.
People & reviewsWriting a review another person can actually use
Your note is for you. A review is for a stranger with a different palate.
People & reviewsLounge etiquette that is not snobbery
Almost all of it reduces to not making your cigar somebody else’s problem.