The weather has changed from rainy and humid to blue skies and sunshine in Havana and I’ve been tearing around herfing at all the usual joints during the last few days of the Festival.

The cigar shops are fairly full of regular stocks but everyone moans as usual that they can’t find any ‘specialities’ like Ramon Allones Replica, Partagas Gran Reserva, Cuaba Coleccion Habanos books etc. Of course they can’t, I have bought them all already!

Had breakfast with Simon and Sean from H&F and bumped into Mike Choi from the Bulgari (Sahakian Cigar Shop and lounge) who came second in the cigar sommelier contest. Well done Mike.

The Trade Fair seemed a little quieter than usual but that may be as it was winding up on the last day. I was very excited to see the first of our Turmeaus humidors made specially for us by Cuba de Arte. The humidors are a numbered limited edition of 10 made of Bubinga with intricate marquetry. Planning to release them complete with some outrageous aged Havanas later this year. Partagas VIP was the perfect place for bumping into friends from all over the world and catching up with them over a smoke (BHK54′s) and a spot of Santiago. Manager ‘Hamlet’ is exceptionally hospitable.

Late lunch at Asturia followed by cigar (Hoyo Grand Epicure) and espresso in the cigar lounge. Could this be one of Havanas best kept secrets? Lovely service, comfortable and in a great location.

Headed to Pabexpo for the gala dinner with Pals, David and Zaffie. Simon Chase hitched a lift with us so we were VIP’d through past the crowds into the reception with a glass or two of champagne and an Upmann Half Corona. Good start to the evening that was to celebrate the brand of H. Upmann.

I had a delightful table including David Savona (Cigar Aficionado magazine), Colin Ganley (Cigar Journal), Gary Heathcott (Communications Award nominee), Paresh Patel (Havana House – Windsor) and Bert Stagnetto from Gibraltar LCDH. Needless to say that a good laugh was had by all.

Being a veggie, the food ain’t for me but the general consensus was that it was pretty good and the service was very slick. There was plenty of wine and rum too as usual.

The evenings entertainment started off with a surprise performance by Tom Jones (who thanked Sir David Tang for the invite) singing 3 songs, including ‘Its Not Unusual’ Tom told us he loves Havana cigars and has been enjoying them since the 1960′s but this was his first visit to Havana. Well ‘my chair turned around’ lol as the Tom Jones performance was the highlight of my trip. Just brilliant!

Entertainment was non-stop (and very loud!… Read that as too loud!) for the rest of the evening. Cigars flowed between dinner course – H. Upmann Connoisseur No. 1 , H. Upmann Magnum 50 and finally the long awaited H. Upmann No. 2 Reserva Cosecha 2010.

The Upmann Reserva did not disappoint (neither have any of the Reserva series!) The additional years of age have softened the usual No. 2 blend into a more sophisticated balanced cigar. Medium sweet, cedar, woody flavours and medium strength. My cigar had a colorado wrapper that was smooth and vein free, cool and easy draw. It doesn’t get much better than this in all honesty. The only down side is we have no idea when they will be released and available in our cigar shops although we are hopeful it will be before the end of the year.

If you haven’t tried previous Reserva series cigars, we usually have Montecristo, Partagas and Romeo Reserva available and you should try them while you can as they are awesome smokes!

If you’re thinking of starting to collect fine cigars, Reserva and Gran reserva are a great place to start. Historically they have proven to go up in value steadily. (We do have limited availability of Partagas Gran Reserva at this time)

Simon Chase conducted a very exciting auction that achieved excellent results with all proceeds going to the Cuban National Health Service.

There were 6 cigar Lots and an extra Lot ’0′ which was a painting.

Its hard to say which was the best Lot as they were all quite breathtaking. Beautiful cigars and magnificent humidors.

The auction was conducted in Euros and the final hammer (or should I say Chaveta) price included shipping and import duties to final destination.

Well done Habanos S.A. On another incredible evening.

I’m hosting dinner this evening at La Fontana and will be enjoying a 1960′s Montecristo No. 2 with… The oldest rum I can find

Raspberry of the week goes to Mastercard who have fraud blocked my credit card whilst in Cuba. Bravo, very clever… Not (I have others no worries!)

In other news… Our Online Cigar Auction ends on the 7th March, still time to get your bids in.

Our next Online Cigar Auction will be Mid April. Still a little time to send us your entries.

Hasta luego

Mitchell

Greetings from sunny Havana where I am enjoying the annual Festival del Habanos.

Just arrived and enjoyed an LFDC Gran Cano in the airport whilst waiting for my suitcase… How civilized

My able assistant Arturo met me and my chums as usual with our regular driver Hector who had a bottle of HC7 and a bucket of ice waiting for us, perfect to decompress after a very long Virgin flight.

Never mind unpacking, we were hitting the ground running and straight off to the Robaina shop at the Melia to get some serious herfing started.

Kicking back with a Partagas Gran Reserva and some Havana Club 15 for a sublime combination whilst seeing numerous friends from all over the world that are in Havana to celebrate the finest cigars Havana has to offer and introduce to us this week.

Staying at the Nacional as ever, I reckon the terrace is one of the best places in the world to herf.

Looking forward to the gala dinner where I understand we will be trying out the new H. Upmann Reserva.

We understand the following line up are due to be launched this year although goodness knows when exactly!

Hoyo de Monterrey Le Hoyo de San Juan  150mm length and 54 ring gauge, cabinets of 10, 25 and tubed

Partagas Serie D No. 6  90mm length and 50 ring gauge, cabinets of 20 and 5 packs

Trinidad Vigia 110mm length and 54 ring gauge, cabinets of 12 and tubed

Romeo y Julieta  Julieta 120mm length and 33 ring gauge, boxes of 25

Quintero Petit Quintero 105mm length and 43 ring gauge, bundles of 25

Romeo y Julieta Cedros de Luxe 140mm length and 50 ring gauge, boxes of 10

Por Larrañaga Picadores No.1 127mm length and 48 ring gauge

H. Upmann No. 2 Reserva Cosecha 2010 156mm length and  52 ring gauge, cabinets of 20  Limited edition of 5000

Cohiba Robustos Supremos Limited Edition 2014 127mm length and  55 ring gauge, boxes of 10

Partagas Seleccion Privada Limited Edition 2014 160mm length and 50 boxes of 10

Bolivar Super Coronas  124mm length and 50 ring gauge, boxes of 25

H. Upmann Humidor Antique Replica 50 Butifara Limited edition of 450 humidors

Partagas Coleccion Habanos Serie E No. 1 170mm length and 54 ring gauge, limited edition of 1000 numbered books

I can’t wait for the Cohiba Limited Edition Robustos Supremos, what a funky size with a whopping ring gauge. If the blend is as good as I hope, I’ll be stashing away a huge amount!

Trip photos on my next blog.

Have a smokey weekend… I know I will

Hasta luego,

Mitchell

Lack of blog last week due to a little R&R and a little business to take care of in sunny Los Angeles ☺ so here is the news…

I spent a week in L.A. organising yet more focus tasting groups for Inca – Secret Blend. The results were overwhelmingly positive and very encouraging.

Nice to be herfing in 80F sunshine instead of the constant rain in London. Whilst not easy to find locations to herf in LA, we managed to get through quite a few cigars between Inca taste testing sessions. I enjoyed Davidoff Short Perfecto in the morning and Nicaraguan Toro in the evenings, man that’s a bold sophisticated smoke, no wonder they are flying off our shelves. I also snuck in a few Alec Bradley Prensados which always hit the spot for me.

Inca – Secret Blend (that’s the version destined for the US market and beyond) is also making some progress as we have signed up US distribution with one of our very favourite cigar companies (more details to follow.) The first production batch of cigars have been made and are amazing smokes, the bands are made and look very cool if I do say so myself!… And all we need now is ‘the box!’ We have been working on the bloody  box development for the last year. It’s a bit different so it’s taken a bit longer than we would have hoped but I am cautiously optimistic that we will have the final pre-production prototype mid-March which I’m very excited about.

Inka -Secret Blend for the UK market expected to be back in stock next week in sizes requested by our customers, that’s the petit coronas and robustos that have been more popular that we would have ever imagined. Apologies for the delay and hopefully we have such a huge imported quantity flying in now that we will not stock out again!

Pound for Pound I don’t think there is a better quality handmade cigar available in the UK. The blend is deliciously sweet and accessible and makes me want to smoke them back to back. It seems that 1000’s of C.Gars and Robert Graham customers would agree with me ☺

So back in my little London HQ and thankfully with no jet lag (my body clock must be broken after years of travelling!) and happy to announce our first ever Spring Cigar Auction. This is an Online only auction with a splendid selection of mature, aged and rare Havana cigars. It works much like eBay… Think of it as CBay! Bidding opened on Thursday and the auctions finishes every few minutes from the 7^th March. We will have another 100 or so Lots to list and hope to have them up next week.

There are some top end Davidoff and Dunhill that collectors love as well as smaller single Lots for smokers. Could be some decent bargains to bag. See the FAQ’s here and shoot me an email sales@cgarsltd.co.uk if you have any questions.

Most of the Lots are in our London humidor and if you can’t visit to personally inspect you are always welcome to email us for condition reports sales@cgarsltd.co.uk

Next week is the Festival in Havana which I’m looking forward to immensely, especially as we expect to be tasting the H. Upmann No. 2 Gran Reserva (I love Reserva and Gran Reserva) Expecting to herf with friends and clients from all over the world and joining the Hunters & Frankau table at the gala dinner as usual.

Just back from lunch at the lovely Ten Manchester street Hotel with friends from Davidoff. Smoked the rather outrageously good Limited Edition Year of the Horse. What a perfect venue for a lunch herf, great service, delightful menu, comfortable and warm… Who could ask for more. We are just starting to build a web page with details of some of my favourite places to herf. You can check out the work in progress here.

If you’re not already signed up to our newsletters you could be missing out as we are planning a series of whisky and cigar taste testing sessions at our beautiful Cambridge branch as well as Liverpool and Chester over the next few months.

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Last day in the office for a week or so as I leave the rainy, windy weather of London and head to sunny Los Angeles A little R&R and a little work on Inca – Secret Blend project, destined for the US market sometime in the near future. My kinda vacation, sunshine and smokes Mainly Davidoff short perfectos which have become sort of a go to smoke when I’m in the USA, great size and shape, sweet blend and always a perfect draw

A warm welcome to Liam, our newest member of staff at our Norfolk offices. Liam’s brief is to ensure that our products have the best prices in the UK and to check all competitors 7 days a week So if you find a lower price that he’s missed  just shoot us an email and we’ll gladly price match or make our prices even lower! <insert maniacal laugh>

Liam’s line Manager, James from our Marketing Team has been having fun putting together some wild mixed box and unusual box offers for our newsletter subscribers this week and we have been amazed at the popularity with orders up 40%! Certainly keeping my London Team busy packing and shipping, we couldn’t even see the door for packages yesterday!!!

Our Rose street Edinburgh branch has had the walk in humidor rebuilt band it’s now double the size so it has a bigger range of cigars than ever. Hope to have some great photos for the website from lovely Manageress, Jo. In the next 24 hours.

Jo and Danilio are passionate about cigars and are always on hand for some helpful advice and recommendations and our shop has a great as well as quirky range of single malt whisky as well as a comprehensive range of pipes and pipe tobacco.

Our little Mayfair outpost is also going through a retrofit with the addition of new cabinets over the next week or two just to make it a little more cute than it already is. Mayfair may be small but it has a super range or premium cigars including many of the limited editions past and present. (It also sells pipes, tobaccos and single malt whisky and you can sample in store!)

I was invited by my old chum Robert Emery to have a smoke at the new Dunhill shop at 1 St James’s earlier in the week and all I can say is WOW. What an absolutely splendid humidor, sampling lounge and shop. Classier than classy, super comfortable and a great range of aged and rare cigars too. Well worth a visit if you are in Town and C.Gars wish them all the very best for a long and successful future.

Yesterday was my annual briefing at Hunters & Frankau headquarters which as always was interesting and exciting as we were updated about all the planned releases of new cigars (some still top secret!) for this year, but after a very long afternoon, Michelle and I found ourselves in an even longer traffic jam due to the train strike/rush hour/rain/mad drivers! We persevered and just about made it on time for  some serious herfing at The Wellesley with some overseas clients and friends.

One of my Pals offered me an incredible Dunhill Ramon Allones Seleccion Suprema No. 82 pre embargo which I can tell you I nubbed till there was just about nothing left! This cigar was so sweet and complex even I was amazed how perfect a smoking experience it was. Possibly one of the best Havanas I have ever smoked. It’s all down to storage of course ‘colder and dryer’ slow down that maturing process and its incredible how the cigars improve over the long term (always assuming good vintage in the first place as a bad vintage will only become an aged bad vintage cigar)

We followed the Dunhill Seleccion with Cohiba BHK54’s which are smoking like a dream and paired them up with some excellent Argentinian Malbec. I reckon the Wellesley staff must be some of the best trained in the business, right up to ‘Master of Cigars’ exams passes. They are always on hand to advise and are a really good bunch of Guys.

Ok that’s the news for now and I’m outta here to pack my perfectos and my sunglasses!

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

I actually manage to amuse myself by how much work I can do over the course of a week, in fact I can still tear around like I did 20 years ago and more important – I still enjoy every minute of every day. ‘Not bad for an old boy’ I hear some of my friends saying

So, my week started on Sunday with a visit to our gorgeous Robert Graham shop in Cambridge where Davidoff have just installed a sooper dooper new walk in humidor adjacent to the sampling lounge.

I spent half a day merchandising the humidor with a delightful range of premium cigars, hopefully our customers will agree it’s a step up from the last version of the walk in humidor. Needless to say, I was sampling Davidoff Nicaraguan Toro’s whilst merchandizing the humidor We will be stocking an extensive range of our favourite Davidoff cigars over the next week or so. In fact outside of the lovely Davidoff shop in central London, this will be the best range in the UK.

Our Cambridge shop has a mouth-watering range of premium cigars, pipe tobaccos, single malt whisky wine and champagne and chocolates as well as a super helpful retail Team headed up by Cailin Morrison (my Partner Ron’s son) I’m looking forward to organizing some great Davidoff cigars tastings in March.

Monday and I zoomed off to Italy for the day. I searched for a particular restaurant that I had heard has a comfortable outdoor smoking area but the taxi couldn’t find it! So I stopped at another restaurant with an outside seating area but after 4 attempts at lighting the patio heaters, the staff gave up as they realised all the gas bottles were empty!

They then very kindly invited us to enjoy lunch with our cigars inside the restaurant. I reckon that was very nice of them as well as super illegal/breaking the smoking ban so I won’t mention the name of the restaurant… But I will go there again in future! We smoked our way through some 1986 Davidoff Dom Perignon paired up with a couple of bottles of Ruinart Rose to celebrate a very successful business transaction.

Wednesday and it was time to head up North by Virgin trains to visit Turmeaus cigar shops in Liverpool and Chester. First class is rather civilized on the train and there’s Wi-Fi on-board which is pretty fast so I thought great opportunity to do some site testing on the new iPad… Only to find that my website is blocked for inappropriate content by Virgin! Shock! Horror! Don’t they know that cigars are a legal product?!?! How ridiculous.

I decided it would be a ‘Cohiba day’ and smoked a robusto, Siglo IV and Genios whilst visiting the Turmeaus shops. I love the contrast between the modern Liverpool Turmeaus shop and the very traditional Turmeaus Chester shop. Both have a comprehensive range of premium cigars, pipe tobaccos and plenty of accessories.

And yes… You are welcome to sample in store and chat to the very knowledgeable staff including my lovely Liverpool Manageress who started in cigar retail with me many years ago and Calum in Chester who is one of the few cigar specialist in the UK who has passed his Master of Cigars exam! Calum’s a very bright chap and terribly enthusiastic about cigars so we are sending him on some additional training to Havana next month with kind assistance of UK importers Hunters & Frankau.

I also bumped in to another Calum in Chester – the young Gentleman who sprung for the £40,000 Regius cigar. Calum has just returned from Nicaragua where special Regius cigars were blended and made to his own taste and specification. I really should plan on a trip to Nicaragua sometime soon.

Thursday and I was heading back to the airport for a long day at our Hamburg La Casa del Habano. I smoked Bolivar 109’s with Christoph and bumped into one of my earliest herfing chums Keith (Cap’n Keith) who was also in Town for a few hours. We managed to squish in a bottle of Champagne whilst chatting about business so it’s fair to say a rather good day was had by all

This week’s raspberry goes to the stupid politicians who are wasting their time and no doubt our money by trying to legislate to ban smoking in cars where children are passengers. A law that would not be possible to govern and manage and are people really so thick as to smoke with children in the car?!

We are very busy planning of our next auction which will be a huge online auction with over 250 Lots expected to be listed and sold on the Online Auction website… Think of it as a sort of cBay instead of eBay! We have a wonderful variety of Lots entered including Davidoff, Dunhill, Pre embargo, aged, rare, mature and limited edition. We also have some interesting singles selections and part boxes so there’s something for everyone’s budget that you won’t find in your local cigar shop!

Time to chill out for a quiet weekend and kick back with some decent Ailein Mor single malt and a box of La Flor de Cano Gran Cano UK regional edition smokes

Have a great weekend,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell