Partagas Festival Last Week, Vintage Cigar Auction This Week!

DSC_0526The annual Partagas Festival was at least as much fun as expected (see photos)

Arriving to an incredible storm last Thursday and being greeted by friend at the airport complete with cigars and a bottle of rum, my chums and I had a good start to 4 days of herfing in Havana.

We visited all the usual LDCH cigar shops and smoked copious quantities of Cohiba Behike 52’s and 54’s. My favourite is still the Melia Habana LCDH as it’s not quite as crazy busy as the Partagas lounge at this time of year.

All the shops were incredibly well stocked with regular lines of cigars of every brand and vitola although I keep hearing rumours that there may be shortages of Cohiba cigars on the horizon (unconfirmed but may be worth stocking up)

We visited Hotel Moka and Las Terrazes on the one day when the weather was delightful. Highly recommended.

The gala dinner was possibly one of the best attended I can remember and held at El Laguito (Salon Protocol – not the factory) a wonderful evening of entertainment, rum, charity auction and lots of wonderful double banded cigars made for the evening.

For the first time I can remember there was no recognition for the ‘Amigos de Partagas’ which seemed odd and it was very sad that  Massimo Di Giovanni is no longer with us to enjoy the Festival that he was so instrumental in making a success. From the amount of posts on Facebook clearly we all miss him dearly.

The Por Larranaga Sobrasalientes UK regional edition has proved as popular as predicted. This delightful cigar is selling out as fast as we can get them in from Hunters and Frankau. Destined to become a classic. Perfect build quality, attractive wrappers and a first rate blend.

Winter Auction time is upon us and I’m looking forward to our dinner event at Boisdale Belgravia this Monday which is a sold out event. We’ll be sampling some fabulous cigars paired up with the finest libations.

The auction of 350 Lots including some of the most unique cigars I have ever come across will start at 5pm.

We’ll be reporting the results live from the auction or at least as fast as we can type (subject only to verification/typos!) on my blog and updating on the auction website.

Still time to place absentee bids online or over email right up till midnight Saturday. Very best of luck to our bidders and sellers.

Have a smokey weekend,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

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