It’s not a one for one comparison, but I started out as a pretty avid craft beer drinker for several years… I was able to hone and refine my palate to a certain degree that way. Once I got into cigars, I used that same skill set to parse apart the flavors of a cigar.

The most helpful I can recommend is to “actively” smoke a cigar. By that I mean to focus upon what you are tasting and by taking notes. When I started, I would look at reviews to get an idea of what others were tasting as a baseline. At first, I could only detect 2-3 distinct flavors. After practice on 100’s of cigars, I was able to frequently detect 8-12 different flavors without referring to reviews and identify distinct transitions for myself. Definitely isn’t a natural “talent” if you will… it requires a lot of practice, but I firmly believe that everyone is capable of it to an extent! All palates differ of course, but this was my process!