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Can anybody tell me if they have noticed a correlation between the color of the ash and the cigar flavor?

I keep hearing about the virtues of white ash, but I have smoked a lot of tasty cigars where the ash was grey and flaky and on the flipside, I have smoke cigars with perfectly formed white ash, which seemed unremarkable.

Also, it seems to me that most of my favorite cigars have little white dots in the ash. What is that all about?

It's been my general observation that a firm white ash is a sign of quality, but as you say, there are exceptions in both directions ...

If a cigar has a white ash, it shows that there is magnasium in the soil where the tobacco was grown ...

It is also a sure fire way to tell if the Cuban cigar you are smoking is a fake. The island of Cuba lacks magnesium in its soil, and the ash will be a very dark gray to even black ... hence, the more magnesium, the whiter the ash.

This is from CA's Cigar's 101:

'According to most cigar experts, a white ash is better than a gray one. This is not merely an aesthetic issue, either. "...if the soil produces a white ash - the better soil gives a whiter ash and more taste," says Fuente. He says that certain manipulations of soil can be made through fertilization, but if too much magnesium (a key ingredient in producing white ash) is added to the mix, the ash will flake, and nobody wants a messy cigar, even if the ash is white.

Of course, ash is not something you taste or smell, but a gray ash indicates that the soil was lacking certain key nutrients, leaving the cigar with insubstantial body, or perhaps little complexity-resulting in a lesser smoke.'

I may have been less than clear in what I said above ... when I said I've thought it to be a sign of quality, I did not mean that in an abstract way, but in the sense that in smoking cigars that yeild a firm white ash, I've observed them to be better smokes than those that yeild grey ashes ...

I think the whiter ash cigars tend to be smoother, whether mild, medium or full-bodied ... those with the grey ash tend toward being somewhat more harsh, whether mild, medium or full-bodied ...

But, as others have already indicated, taste is a highly individual thing and I'm speaking in broad generalities ... exceptions exist in BOTH directions.

Ha! Those Fuente guys what do they know...