Adios January – Ola Monte Gran Reserva!

Delayed blog due to rather manic week starting with a trip to my shops in Liverpool and Chester on Monday which is always fun for me as I love searching through the walk in humidors to see if there are any goodies. Managed to find a few boxes of the now sold out Por Larranaga Regalias del Londres, Flor de Cano Short  Robusto, El Rey Del Mundo Choix De L’ Epoque, Punch Serie D’ Oro no.1, H Upmann Magnum 46 2001 vintage (no bands)Cohiba Gran Reserva (singles) and a few other great smokes that are hard to come by.

Congrats to our new Manageress Jayne at Chester and best of luck for the future to our retiring Manageress Fiona. Chester Turmeaus has gone through a bit of a face lift over the last few months finishing with lovely comfortable new leather chairs that have just arrived and are perfect for in store cigar sampling 🙂

Our professional photographer Tillman Prestcher from Hamburg arrived on Tuesday to photograph some vintage cigars for a client and was rapidly grabbed by the camera strap to do a load of Cuban antique cabinet photographs for me instead! Setting up studio in one of our offices, Tillmann did his usual excellent work for which I am always grateful.

Wednesday was Lanesborough herfing evening with friends from overseas. Packed as ever on the terrace and service as good as ever- this is the premier spot for a smoke/drink in Town. We herfed our way through a few UK regionals with some good single malt which was perfect on the cold evening.

Thursday was my annual meeting at Hunters and Frankau to go through all the new products expected to be launched through the year. Sampled my way through a Monte Open Eagle whilst chatting with Jemma and Sean and discussing how I could top last year’s record sales. Montecristo Gran Reserva will finally be released in the UK late this week but don’t get too excited yet as the allocations are quite tiny and it may be some time before we have enough stock coming through to satisfy the huge demand for these fine smokes. Limited edition of 5000.

We expect the UK Bolivar RE early march and that should prove to be hugely popular too. 3000 numbered wooden boxes of 10 Bolivar Britanicas measuring 5 1/3” length and 46 ring gauge specially double banded for the UK. Best to email and register interest soonest because if these sell as fast as we expect, they won’t be around for too long. The other UK regional will be a Punch Medaille D’Oro  but I don’t w3ant to hazard a guess on when this will become available!

Racing back to the office from my H&F meeting and just in time for an office herf that had started with a swing or at least a lot of cigar smoke and pink champagne as our pre herf to the Burns night dinner we have every year at Boisdale. This year we changed venue from Belgravia to Canary Wharf and it was good if not better than ever. Monte 2’s on the cigar terrace, dinner followed by cigars in the Cigar Library. My herfing chums and I love Boisdale!

Having my usual fun tweeting on Twitter and have sussed out that just about any time I tweet that I am heading to Alfie Turmeaus cigar shop in Mayfair, friends/clients show up for a smoke and a drink! (which is just fine by me 🙂 ) 

No fly zone for me this week (thank goodness) but just as well, I have a lot of serious Office and Boisdale herfing scheduled for this week!

Have a smokey week

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

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