The Craft · Step 04
Three ways to taste a cigar.
What Dolan taught us in a Havana lounge — and why we'll never smoke the same way again.
A man named Dolan — Cuban, late twenties, a chance encounter in the lounge of the Meliá Cohiba in Havana in 2019 — sat down next to us and changed how we smoke forever. He didn't just show us how to light a cigar. He showed us how to listen to one. After the cedar, after the circle of fire, he set down the lighter and said: now we taste it. Not with the tongue. With everything.
He showed us three techniques that night. We've been working with them ever since.
The techniques
Draw smoke into your mouth, close it, then use gentle chest pressure to push the smoke out through your nose — not into your lungs, never that. What your tongue tastes is the surface. What your nose finds is the complexity underneath it. Spice, leather, earth, sweetness — the retrohale reveals what a standard puff keeps hidden.
Take a draw, hold it. Cup your hands tightly over your mouth and nose, creating a sealed chamber. Breathe the smoke in slowly through your nose into the space your hands create. The aroma concentrates. You are not just smelling it — you are inside it. Dolan called this one the most revealing of all.
Short, rapid draws in quick succession — your lips making the "p" sound repeatedly. This excites the palate differently than a slow draw, waking up taste receptors that a single long pull misses. Flavor notes that were subtle become distinct. It sounds unusual. It works.
You are listening.