Trains, Planes and Automobiles!

I hope everyone enjoyed the Easter/Passover break… I know I did 🙂 Armed with a rather large baggie of smokes to top up my home humidor the scene was set for some serious herfing! To name a few cigars:

Bolivar Belicosos 2007 – the best  vintage since the early 1990’s , think sweet, sweet, sweet and complex tobacco flavours.

Ramon Allones Petit Belicosos – UK regional edition – this cigar has matured to perfection with rich, bold full spicy flavours.

Punch Serie D’Oro No. 1 – UK regional edition – truly my favourite of all the regional editions I have tried ( and that’s a lot!) one for the connoisseur.

Partagas SD No. 4 2013 – darkest maduro wrapper leaf, aesthetically perfect with a return to form for this cigar in terms of a true Partagas blend.

Saint Luis Rey Serie A cabinet selection 2001 – not a good vintage in general but 13 years age on this puppy has done it a power of good and they are smoking like a dream.

Davidoff Puro D’Oro Gorditos – for a change of pace. I love this range of cigars. Unique in character, strong yet smooth and satisfying.

Inka – Secret Blend Robustos (rojo red) – handmade long filler Peruvian puros, perfect from the first to the last puff. Part of my best selling range of New World cigars.

Alec Bradley Prensado – I rarely smoke a Churchill size cigar but this one is the bomb. Full spicy flavoured and beautifully crafted, no wonder it’s so highly rated.

The weather held out thankfully and friends and I enjoyed the new smoking deck at chez Orchant to the max.

Back to work last week and I was on the road again zooming up to Liverpool by Virgin train from Euston. Well done to Virgin for redeveloping the previous awful first class lounge to an excellent standard but a big raspberry to them for blocking my website on their free wifi! What the hell is that all about? Cigars are still legal in the UK the last time I looked!

Turmeaus Liverpool Cigar Tasting EventTurmeaus Liverpool is always such a pleasure to visit and my manager Christine and her Team offer the friendliest of customer service. We enjoyed a delightful cigar tasting evening with friends of Turmeaus from Liverpool at the pub smoking terrace next door to the shop and our thanks go to Scott from Tor Imports for providing such excellent cigars to sample.

Cigars that were sampled:
La Flor de Antillas Robusto (Cigar Aficionado No. 1 Cigar of the Year 2012)
Smooth, medium bodied, handmade Nicaraguan cigar.
La Flor Dominicana Chisel Gorda (Best Dominican Republic Cigar 2013 – Cigar Journal)
Amazing cigars using a blend of Dominican tobaccos for the filler and binder.

The cigars were excellent, the company was just brilliant, we all had a great laugh from start to finish. I really should spend more time up North as the crowd are an absolute riot to herf with. The pub should be pleased with the evening as I drank all of their Macallan and Glenrothes!Turmeaus Liverpool is always such a pleasure to visit and my manager Christine and her Team offer the friendliest of customer service. We enjoyed a delightful cigar tasting evening with friends of Turmeaus from Liverpool at the pub smoking terrace next door to the shop and our thanks go to Scott from Tor Imports for providing such excellent cigars to sample.

Next morning and I was driven over to Turmeaus Chester by Alfie (as in ‘Alfie Turmeaus’) who helped create our new exclusive range of pipe tobacco. Checkout Alfie’s tasting notes on the product notes:

Turmeaus Blend Pipe Tobacco Tins

1817 Blend (named after the year Turmeaus was established)

Alfie’s Blend

Orchant Blend

Morrison’s Blend

Long Ashes Competition at Turmeaus Chester Cigar Tasting EveningI wasn’t able to stay for the tasting event in the evening at Chester but I understand the cigars were a great success and the long ash contest a lot of fun! Thanks again to Scott from Tor for his support and Bar Lounge for hosting the evening on their delightful cigar friendly terrace.

Cigars that were sampled:
Nub Sun Grown 466

Soft spicy tones, rich, full-bodied Nicaraguan cigar.
Cain Daytona Robusto
Ultra smooth, medium-bodied Nicaraguan cigar.

Friday and it was back to the airport to shoot up to Robert Graham Edinburgh for the day. Canongate, Robert Graham is quirkier than ever as we have put a huge range of one off vintage single malt and blended scotch whisky bottles and miniatures and Rose street is looking very cool now that the walk in humidor has been completed.

My Partner Ron and I sampled our award winning Treasurer Littlemill 1985 which was outstanding with a Trinidad Robusto Extra cigars.

Back to London office for a few hours to meet with colleague Gennaro Lettieri of Tabacalera del Oriente (the factory in Tarapoto, Peru that makes Inka – Secret Blend cigars) we chatted about our plans for International roll out over the next few months of our cigars over a bottle of Dalmore cigar malt and Secret Blend cigars that had been matured for a year since rolling. They were bloody excellent (that’s my official tasting notes!)

So, to our dedicated followers of Inka – Secret Blend cigars from Peru, I find myself once again apologizing that some of the sizes within the range have sold out yet again. We just cannot keep up with the demand for these cigars that I created almost two years ago now. We do have another large shipment flying over as I’m writing this blog so our range will be complete and available again very soon.

Secret Blend will no doubt continue to grow in popularity due to the quality of the tobacco and the rich, sweet, pure taste characteristic of the blend I created. You can only buy Inka cigars from us as we cut out any middle man margin to bring the best possible value to our customers.

Now thinking back to  when I was briefly in secondary school and how useless I was at Geography (as well as most other subjects) it greatly amuses me to award raspberry of the week to HSBC, the bank that continually asks us if our payments to Tabacalera del Oriente in Peru have anything to do with Cuba! Even I know that Peru is nowhere near Cuba lol. Too funny. Actually seems to be a lot of paranoia out there about Cuba at this time which seems a shame. Still nice to know that the UK has a good trading relationship with Cuba.

I’m almost out of breath thinking about what a busy week I had! And I’m doing it all over again this week with trips to Italy and France. Tough life and all that…

Cigar Auction time is getting close with catalogue due to be online and in print on the 19th May and auction finishing on the 1st June. We have just about finished cataloguing almost 350 Lots of aged, rare, mature, limited edition , books, humidors, Davidoff, Dunhill and pre embargo cigars. Something for everyone’s taste and a few outstanding gems. No doubt a few bargains to be won as always.

Plain Packaging! 

Hands off our packsYou may remember the success of the Hands Off Our Packs campaign which generated a huge response at the time of the original Plain Packaging Consultation.

In advance of the imminent publication of the Consultation with draft Plain Packaging Regulations, and given the Parliamentary process which will follow it, FOREST have now launched another campaign which targets No. 10 directly.

The link you need is http://noprimeminister.org.uk/ and it is very straightforward and can be completed in about a minute.

It would be very helpful if you could send this information on to your employees, friends and family on the basis that the more signatures are generated the better.

Have a smokey week,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell