Palate Fatigue
/ PAL-it /
Flavor & Tasting
Definition
The dulling of taste and smell perception over a long smoke or across several cigars, as receptors adapt to sustained stimulus.
Why it matters
Fatigue explains why the final third of a big cigar often reads as monotonous, and why serious tasting sessions are kept short and spaced with water.
In context
"By the third cigar palate fatigue had flattened everything into generic wood."
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