[shilala]

I think Moses is right on the money. It's hard to describe some smells, or things I sense. In most cases, it's not even a smell, but seems more like a combination of smell and taste.
I can put words to most things, but with new cigars come new flavors.
I smoked an old SFO Lancero yesterday, and the best I could describe the predominant flavor is "It tasted a lot like pine tree, but right before the pine smell shows up".
Today I can describe it better, because I thought of where I smelled the smell before. It's very earthy and thick like standing in the hemlock trees in a creek bottom around here. You don't get the pine smell, but everything that comes with it.
That's over-descriptive, but it's accuarate.
To describe it, I'd say earthy and musty, but nice.

I get what you're saying about food, too. I can pick out ingredients, and I always know just what to add to fill in the empty spaces in a dish. If you rely on your taste and smell to analyze food, it's kind of like you'll do with a cigar.
With a cigar, there are more ways to experience it. How you take the smoke changes things. You can snork, retrohale, and sniff the smoke from each end of the cigar, and all provide different things.

For me, describing it to someone else is way down on the scale of importance. If I'm smoking with others, I'll make a comment, and if the flavors are special enough, I'll ask them to try the cigar. If I'm by myself, I just get drawn into the cigar and pay attention to it. It allows me to relax and not think about anything else.
If anything, I match the flavors with other cigars so I can tell guys what they'd like based on what they like already. That becomes pretty easy because there aren't a lot of variants.
Personally, I look for flavors that aren't like any other cigars. Those are the ones I talk about most and suggest most so that guys can have new experiences.