Greetings from the organized chaos of my London office which has been
turned into a photographic studio for the last week by photographer
Tillman Pretscher. We have just about finished photographing and
cataloguing the Lots for the 30th November Vintage Cigar Auction which
has been a humungous task as there are some 250 Lots for sale which is
more than the last few auctions. Some look like ridiculous bargains ( I
wish I could bid !) I am so looking forward to working with auctioneer
Brian Ebbesen again on this event

From incredible pre embargo cigars to Dunhills, Davidoff, limited
edition, aged, rare and mature cigars- quite a selection. The auction
will be help at Boisdale Belgravia- my favourite cigar friendly hang out
to herf at. Catalogues available next week by post and of course online.
You can of course register online to bid on the night at Boisdale. I
gather from my Team that Boisdale are laying on canapes and copious
amounts of Champagne before and after the auction- well done Ranald,
what a class act.

The builders are still banging away at our new warehouse/office
premises and we are hopeful that we will start to move in there in the
next 2 weeks- that will be great timing as we have over 1000 humidors of
all sizes shapes and prices arriving in October from my IPCPR New
Orleans purchases in August.

All of this makes me feel like I need a holiday but I remember going to
Spain recently with co Director Karyn and as I presented the passports
to Easy Jet at check in ,the chap looked at Karyn and said ‘ ok you
changed your hair colour’, as he handed back our passports ( we had no
idea what he was talking about. ) We then handed our passports over at
the gate and were thanked and handed them back as we ‘Speedy boarded’
the aircraft. Finally we arrived at Malaga airport and presented our
passports to immigration who thanked us and handed them back. All sound
normal so far? Yes -until I looked at Karyns passport and realised that
it was in fact our daughters passport with a photo of her when she was 9
years old ! So much for airline security- simply too bad for words. So
after a well deserved cerveza and Montecristo no.2 we managed to get the
correct passport flown out to us and return to London a few days later
with correct passports!

Monday I’m seeing Michael Buble in concert at Wembley which should be
good as I’ve seen him before ( Earls Court) and enjoyed immensely –
Swing and cigars- perfect combo ( may have to wait till I get in the car
for the smokes though!)

Wednesday is dinner at Boisdale Belgravia with a terribly famous film
producer of one of my all time favourite gangster movies 🙂 great
excuse to get him to sign my movie poster. Then I can get it framed and
put it up next to some of my other old gangster movie posters.

Thursday I’m heading out to Turmeaus in Chester and Turmeaus in
Liverpool. We are about to redevelop the Liverpool shop and in fact open
two specialist shops side by side on Fenwick street ( one being where
our current shop is) that should give us some more floor space as well
as beautiful purpose built shops similar to our West Hampstead shop in
quality. This is my favourite part of being a specialist cigar retailer-
I love setting up the businesses and especially stocking up the walk in
humidors to see how many cigars I can end up fitting in the humidor (
usually quite a lot!)

Still waiting for the UK regional Por Larranaga to be released. We were
fairly certain that it would be September but that been and gone now
although I am fairly confident we will, get it this week. Good grief I
can’t wait to smoke that cheeky little smoke ! I love Larranaga 🙂
that said I would not hold your breath waiting for the Flor de Cano UK
regional release. I think we will be lucky to see it this side of
Christmas but hey ! we are talking about Cuba!- anything is possible and
most things impossible 🙂

…and finally. The last 2 weeks I have been utterly hooked on Monte 2’s.
There is a big time return to blending form on these cigars. Medium
strength but full flavour and remarkably sweet from start to finish.
Beautiful wrappers, perfect construction- a total winner.

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing.

Mitchell