The New year has started in style with record numbers of orders so I can only assume our clients had a blast over the holidays and humidors need some serious replenishing 🙂 which works for me!

Our retail cigar and whisky shops  took a good bashing over the hols but we are already restocked and looking as good as ever with our usual humungous range of Havanas and other premium cigars as well as our niche range of single malt whisky and rum. I had a serious herf with journalist James Leavey at our new Mayfair shop  yesterday to test out the sampling room air/smoke filtration- which worked perfectly.

We went through some fab Juan Lopez Orchant Seleccion matched up with our Benrinnes 1998  which made for a great combo. Lunch was opposite the cigar shop at the Kings Arms Great food and great service. Followed by Por Larranaga Magnificos  and some Deanston 1995.

James was in a pretty good documentary on smoking that was on BBC4 on Wednesday evening which was partly filmed at our West Hampstead shop  The documentary had some brilliant old footage. I just wish they would have distinguished more clearly between cigarette and cigar smoking.

You can’t buy our whisky at the Mayfair shop although we are likely to get it licenced in the next month or two as well as our Liverpool Turmeaus shops as we can’t find a specialist whisky shop in Liverpool so that will be a good addition to the range. We will be setting the date for the Summer Cigar Auction later this month and entries are already coming in.

We do of course buy and sell vintage and unusual Havanas all year round so if you can’t wait you can always drop me a line and I’ll be happy to advise [email protected] if you are looking for anything unusual drop me a line as I may have it or be able to source it for you I’ll need to slow down on my smoking UK regionals as stocks are running very low on many of them.

All great cigars and a great range of brands and vitola. I have always thought that the UK market gets the finest Havanas cigars available and still do 🙂 Burns night herf this year will be at Boisdale  as usual although my smoking chums have not yet decided whether we will herf in Belgravia or Canary Wharf. If you would like to join us just email me ! I’m off to La Casa del Habano – Hamburg  next week for some German regional sampling with my partner Christoph Wolters as well as some rum sampling in our amazing new sampling room 🙂

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell