Our Vintage Cigar Auction was held at Boisdale Canary Wharf on Monday evening. Not only was it a huge success with almost 96% of the Lots entered being sold but it was also a great herf for all of the attendees.
Almost 80 people attended the event and there were 100’s of absentee bidders from all over the globe.
The results were posted live on my last blog and updated with after auction sales on the auction website.
Highest priced Lot was the Partagas 160th anniversary humidor – Highly desirable now and fabulous smokes but there was something for every price range and many bidders left the room very happy indeed.
I’m often asked ‘Who are the bidders?’ smoker or collectors? ‘ I think the most accurate answer is both. Although many are a combination of smoker and collector.
I am amazed at the amount of interest in Cohiba limited editions which seem to continue to climb in value with every auction. Pre Embargo Havanas are also definitely on the up. Davidoff and Dunhill ever popular and more than steady in value.
Hunters and Frankau kindly supplied us with Rafael Gonzales Perlas, Romeo Petit Churchill and Montecristo Edmundo to smoke before and after the auction, Balvenie did two fabulous whisky tastings with their Caribbean Cask and 17 year old, Boisdale supplied fabulous canapés and as did White House of Hendon. My thanks to all of our sponsors for their generous support.
Fair to say a great evening was had by all. Looking forward to our Winter Auction and accepting entries from now. Bear in mind our Auctions are a very small part of our year round vintage Havana cigar sales and we are happy to value/buy/sell for and on behalf of clients every day of the year.
Thursday was cigar and whisky tasting night at Robert Graham Ltd – Cambridge, another fabulous and packed event with over 30 attendees sampling some fabulous cigars introduced by the equally fabulous and very knowledgeable (As well as entertaining) George Sosa of Alec Bradley Cigars. The cigars we sampled were :
Alec Bradley Black Market Robusto
Tempus Terra Novo Robusto Natural
Tempus Terra Novo Robusto Maduro
The Tempus was an exclusive opportunity to smoke a cigar that has not been released to the UK market yet – They will arrive in Sept/Early Oct. Someone wanted to buy a box on the night!
The ‘take home’ cigar at the end of the night was the Prensado Robusto (Churchill was No. 1 rated cigar of 2011)
The whiskies sampled were Robert Graham Ltd independent award winning bottlings:
We had an eclectic mix of chaps from the UK, US and even Australia and all enjoyed a great evening.
If you haven’t tried Alec Bradley cigars yet, you really should do, they are very rich, full flavoured and smooth. Well-crafted with very attractive wrappers and excellent presentation.
My thanks to the Robert Graham Team for putting together such a splendid evening, George Sosa for coming over to our little Island and Scott from Tor for providing the great cigars.
View all the pictures from this event at the end of this post.
We are already planning our next Cambridge tasting event which will be in conjunction with our friends at Hunters & Frankau and will feature some of the finest Havana cigars. Email and join our events mailing list [email protected]
Next week I’m looking forward to a long overdue visit to our Norfolk offices where I understand we are setting up a website to sell empty cigar boxes! (I probably smoked all of the cigars already!) My sales team tell me that we sell so many boxes that are made into guitars and handbags as well as restaurants that use them to serve the bill in, they are quite stunned! So we have a huge collection (Around 10,000 boxes!) from long gone brands (All shapes and sizes) that we will have the first empty box website in the world (Allegedly!) too funny.
OK well that’s the end of a very looooong week for me so I’m off home to kick back for the weekend, armed with a bottle of Ailein Mor and a box of Cohiba Behike 56 (Smoking quite beautifully at this time)
Have a great weekend
Peaceful puffing
Mitchell
