XVII Festival Habano

By my reckoning this was the 16th out of 17 of the February Festivals I have attended. I was in Havana for the first one but too poor to buy a ticket to the gala dinner! It’s been quite amazing to see the Festival develop, change and for the most part improve over the years and this year was no let down.

So I went through my usual routine with plenty of pre-flight pampering in the Virgin lounge at Gatwick followed by a few glasses of Champagne to get me in the Festival mood. Sat myself down on the plane next to a Cuban young lady who seemed to be dancing to iPod music throughout the flight (very entertaining – maybe she was happy to get out of London’s cold weather?!)

Service on Virgin Atlantic was excellent as ever and I should probably take this opportunity to apologise for snagging a load of extra Fab lollies that were sort of left in the galley looking lonely and needing to be eaten (apologies Mr Branson – I was indeed the ice lolly thief.)

Cohiba Behike BHK 54 Cigar - Box of 10Arriving at Jose Marti was at least as entertaining as usual with a 2 hour wait for our suitcases but we gave up stressing about the slow pace of service in Cuba many years ago 🙂 Fortunately our friends that met us at the airport were well prepared with a bottle of Santiago 11 year old rum and a few Cohiba BHK 54’s left over from our November trip so we livened up fairly fast. Lucky I had a few BHK’s in Havana as there was no sign of them in any of the cigar shops.

In our usual ‘let’s hit the ground running’ style we headed straight over to a cocktail reception at the Habana Libre Hotel which was delightful as I bumped into a zillion friends and clients from all over the world whilst knocking back a Mojito or two and herfing a Piramides that was one of the smokes being handed out.

I changed hotels this year from the Nacional where I usually stay to the Saratoga and it was in fact a very welcome change. Best service I can remember in Cuba and super comfortable suite. The bar was comfortable and smoker friendly of course and the Wi-Fi worked pretty well. Good thing it did work as I had no data on my phone for the whole trip (note to Cuba: – please settle data bill with EE so I can work on my next trip – thank you.)

The top floor pool area rapidly became a firm favourite herfing location as we watched the smoke pollution billowing out of the local power plant and looked over the streets and buildings of Havana. An amazing array of new buildings, old buildings and collapsing buildings. Capitolio Building and the National ballet still closed for renovations.

cohiba_cigar_factoryWe herfed our way round all the usual places including the Melia Habana, Partagas, Habana Libre, Melia Cohiba, 5th and 16th in Miramar and Palacio and whilst all humidors seemed pretty well stocked there was no sign of Cohiba Behike anywhere so I smoked through my stash of 54’s from last November. Lots of talk about lack of wrapper leaf and likely shortages until at least this April but when I visited El Laguito there was no sign of any shortage and the quality and size of the leaf was quite superb. There was also plenty of rolling of Behikes! (Maybe they are all coming to the UK market as we have great supply! – TY Hunters & Frankau)

We are lucky in the UK as our importer Hunters & Frankau keep huge stocks, as do we. That way we can usually iron out most stock shortage situations.

Nice to bump in to Naomi Campbell and Paris Hilton at the Habana Libre. Paris is super pretty in real life (more so than in mags/on TV!) I wonder if she knew that the hotel was originally the Havana Hilton?!

I managed to find a few decent antiques and magazines to add the collection and enjoyed mooching round the Convention Centre bumping into many old friends. Not sure why they don’t put the air conditioning on though? – it was pretty darn hot and humid!

The Gala Dinner was the usual incredible event at Pabexpo, apparently attended by some 1400 people! This year was a mega Montecristo 80th anniversary celebration and we were treated lots of Monte’s including: Petit No. 2, Media Corona (surprisingly good), Edmundo, Churchill Anejados and 80th Aniversario (outstanding).

Montecristo_80th_anniversary_cigarWe understand that the 80th Aniversario Montecristo will be with us at some stage which is very exciting. I will try to keep calm though as we are still waiting for the Upmann No. 2 Reserva that was introduced to us at last year’s Festival!

Great and rather non-stop entertainment (too loud as usual) and some pretty decent Havana Club Seleccion de Maestros rum and a very warm welcome from Jorge Luís Fernández Maique, the commercial vice president of Habanos S.A.

The Habanos Man of the Year award for communications  was an interesting one as two of my friends were nominated with Gary Heathcott winning and Colin Ganley being the runner up as such. Well done to both of them.

IMG_4517The Auction was successfully and very well handled by Simon Chase and as you can see from the image, the 6 Lots were quite breath-taking. Simon reminded bidders that the Embargo was still firmly in place and punishing the economy and all proceeds were donated to the Cuban National Health Service.  The auction total raised was 662,500 Euros… Well done Simon.

The rest of the trip consisted of a lot of cigar herfing, rum drinking and finally catching the flu… Marvellous.

So, another great trip to Havana and I’m already looking forward to the November Partagas Festival. My thanks as ever to Hunters & Frankau as well as the Cuba C.Gars Team (Arturo, Zaffie, Mike and Hector) for 5 days of non-stop herfing and laughing.

Back to Blighty and a very hectic schedule ahead including the official opening event at our La Casa del Habano – Chester on the 17th March. The tickets are more or less sold out now and this will be a very special evening for C.Gars Ltd. Sean Croley from Hunters & Frankau will be cutting the ribbon as our guest of honour. Canapés from our favourite restaurant Bar – Lounge (thank you Neil), Chocolates from Rococo, Fabulous Ron Mulata and cigars from our humidor 🙂

norfolk_cigar_shop_grand_openingI’m also looking forward to the opening of our Norfolk Turmeaus premises on the 24th of March (tickets available here). The Norfolk opening is a particularly sentimental one for me and co-Director Laura as C.Gars Ltd was ‘officially’ founded in Norfolk way back in the mid 1990’s but it was mail order cigar business only at that time. So to finally be opening a Turmeaus there is pretty cool for us. We are looking forward to welcoming Brian Shapiro of Oliva cigars as our guest of honour and will be sampling some ridiculously good Oliva cigars complimented by Mulata rum and Mojitos. Norfolk is such a beautiful county and I could never understand why there wasn’t a specialist but now there is! Our premises adjoins our main warehouse and offices so you can imagine how comprehensive the range of cigars, tobacco accessories and humidors are.

Our next Vintage Cigar Auction will be held at the delightful Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge on the 15th June. We are accepting entries at this time and all enquiries can be emailed to Laura and her auction team at [email protected]

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

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