Prague Herfing!

Just back from a few days R&R in sunny Prague 🙂 I have been to Prague with Michelle many years ago but had almost forgot what a beautiful city this is in terms of architecture (quite breath-taking) as well as in terms of how smoker friendly it is!

CjN1t84WYAAGbuzGranted, I was lucky as the weather was fairly fab but just about every café, bar, restaurant had outside (many covered and heated) patios with ashtrays on the tables and no one batted an eye lid as I lit up my Inka Secret Blend Half Coronas, Chicos and Upmann Half Coronas.

I visited the La Casa del Habano which is a pretty large cigar store and lounge with a decent range in the walk in humidor and I went to the Cohiba Atmosphere which was pretty impressive as a concept (first one I have seen) We stayed in the Kings Court Hotel which was first rate/very well located and the casino allows cigar smoking (I finished 20 quid up on roulette!)

That’s the end of my international trips for a few weeks at least which is a bit of a relief as it is starting to feel that I have spent more time out of the UK than in the UK!… and that’s the first 5 months of the year passed already! Vintage cigar auction coming up fast on the 20th and we are already taking entries for our Winter auction. They say time flies when you’re enjoying yourself so I must be having a bloody good time!

So a few other exciting bits and pieces including the introduction of two new Macanudo Inspirado sizes next week to join the madly popular Mareva. We are also looking forward to the Davidoff cigar roller events at our Chester Turmeaus shop in June and we’ll be running a series of Davidoff specials at all of our shops and online from the 8th June.

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new_regius_2015_cigarsThe huge success of the Regius cigar brand marches on with no end to this brands popularity in the UK. Checkout the range on this link. Great quality and super value. My favourites being the Orchant Seleccion of course 😉 Volumes of flavour from this Nicaraguan dark wrappered beauty.

Nice article about Marc Sinden in Cigar Journal last week, read it on this link.

liverpool_albany_humidor_planTurmeaus at The Albany, Liverpool is coming along nicely and I understand in addition to a floor we now have walls! this will give you an idea of what the humidor will look like. Fair to say it should be pretty impressive with a huge range of Cuban and the best New World cigars.

We’re having a bit of a Summer party bash at La Casa del Habano – Chester on the 8th June. Tickets on this link but you may need to hurry as the event is more or less sold out now. We have shoe shines and wet shaves, music, canapés and of course a Havana cigar tasting paired up with some rather tasty single malt whisky and Cuban rum. I’ll be hosting the event so I’m looking forward to herfing with our whisky club members as well as our La Casa clients. It will be a memorable evening 🙂

On the 14th June I’ll be herfing at the Hunters & Frankau Summer Party which is being held at The Corinthia. I can’t wait to see what new cigars will be released and I’m hoping it’s the new UK regional edition. I can’t think of any other new cigars that have been released from Havana this year so fingers crossed this will be the first… at last!

Michelle is on vacation this week so I’m ‘stuck’ in the office all week and I’ll be taking advantage of the time putting the finishing design touches on the Orchant Selection Cigar single malt whisky that I have just created. It’s a first rate Highland that pairs up to perfection with a fine cigar. it won’t drown out the delicate flavours of a good Havana and this will be the best value cigar malt on the market (would you expect anything less of me?!)

Have a smokey week.

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

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Herfing USA!

Just back from a hard weeks herfing in New York 🙂 We enjoyed excellent weather but fortunately the weather was not crucial as there are so many places to herf indoors. New York is seriously cigar friendly.

CiL7y6KWwAA-JDAMy first stop was Davidoff on 6th Avenue. This used to be my early morning hang out for many years when it was De La Concha and it’s a bit of a shame that the Olde worlde charm of DLC has been replaced with an ultra-modern shop. It used to have so much atmosphere and was a very friendly place to meet and chat with fellow cigar smokers. I heard that the Davidoff Puro D’Oro range may be discontinued so I smoked a Gordito as I always enjoyed this blend. A perfectly constructed cigar (aren’t all Davidoffs?!) with a slight saltiness as a flavour characteristic but light to medium strength that made for a well-balanced smoke.

CiMkGZFXIAENfDNNext stop was my favourite cigar store in the USA, the world famous Nat Sherman. I love this place as the staff and the customers are all super friendly. I’m bias though as they also feature Inca – Secret Blend in the fabulous walk-in humidor! That said I smoked Nat Sherman Sterling which are one of my favourite New World cigars. We proudly import and stock a good range of Nat Sherman cigars both online and in store. Great value and excellent quality cigars that we highly recommend.

CiRzNAHWEAU6UOgI think the newest Davidoff shop and lounge is at Brookfield Place and I enjoyed a Davidoff Nicaraguan robusto whilst Karyn was busy shopping. This cigar store is beautiful and the service was very friendly too, the humidor was very impressive and the lounge very comfortable.

An hour out of NYC and I was at J.R. Cigars in Whippany, billed as the biggest cigar store in the world! I first herfed here some 17 years ago and it was great to return and see how it had changed with more CiWhj_6W0AAPrErcomfortable lounge areas and a mouth-watering selection of just about every cigar imaginable. Impressive would be an understatement. J.R. Cigars are now stocking Inca – Secret Blend and it was a pleasure to meet the Team that deal with all of the products, internet and marketing. Really great bunch who clearly are at the top of their game.

Saturday night was time for the late show at Carnegie Club with a Sinatra tribute show. Brilliant orchestra and singer and a fabulous late night herf with some of my best friends. We herfed our way through a ton of Fuente Opus X paired up with… A lot of Macallan 🙂 till the early hours of the morning.

Late night smokes at Bar and Books on Lexington is always fun and they have a great whisky menu too. They have a few locations including Prague in the Czech Republic so I plan to check that out next week when I’m over there.

CiWDGv9WkAEEbQyWe enjoyed some great evenings including going to Lavo which was very cool, Polo Bar – very chic, and Park Side highly recommended.

We also herfed at Gran Havana Room and blasted through a box of Regius Orchant Seleccion Hermosos that I brought over for friends to try.

Sunday was time to relax at Club Macanudo where we smoked Macanudo cigars 🙂 with some Balvenie 21.

All in all a rather mega herfing week and I can’t wait for my next trip to the Big Apple!

In other news… Summer Cigar Auction is fast approaching (20th June) and the catalogue is at the printers already so we hope to have it online and in the post to registered clients in the next week or so. Its huge and interesting sale of over 300 Lots of aged and rare Havanas. There are still a few tickets left for the event which includes a whisky and cigar tasting at the Sahakian cigar lounge post auction. More details on this link.

The new Turmeaus at The Albany in Liverpool is coming along nicely and I understand the floor now exists! The builders are crashing away and we’re on schedule for a late Summer opening of our latest cigar and whisky store and sampling lounge. Exciting stuff!

There was also a nice little write up on HalfWheel.com featuring a superb portrait by Brooks Wittington, so my thanks to them! You can see the article on this link.

So, after a week of delicious New World cigars it’s time to get back to some of my favourite Havanas of course and the first one up in smoke was an Orchant Seleccion Bolivar Royal Corona a true return to blending form for this cheeky robusto. Full flavour and full strength, how they used to be. Dark wrappers perfect construction and a beautiful aroma with volumes of smoke to tease the palate.

It’s good to be home!

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

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Norfolk Herfing :)

c7gar_car_astonI love bank holiday weekends, especially as a 4 day week follows 🙂 I’m definitely more suited to a 4 day week and think I will start to make a habit of it. I can’t believe we actually had decent weather on Sunday and I was able to go topless in the C7GAR car whilst herfing a Cohiba Robusto Supremo with Karyn doing an excellent Bridget Jones impersonation!

Back to herfing, I mean working on Tuesday with a zoom on the motorway to Turmeaus – Norfolk where we held a wonderful tasting event on Tuesday afternoon and evening.

IMG_3715C.Gars Ltd has been in Norfolk for almost 20 years and we opened our specialist tobacconist adjoining our offices and warehouse a couple of years ago. Norfolk is a most beautiful county and we have super premises 12 miles from Norwich. To the best of my knowledge there are no other specialist tobacconists for a zillion miles around which probably explains the popularity of this location for our Turmeaus shop and lounge.

IMG_3712As you can see from the photos we have a well-stocked walk in humidor, a beautiful shop crammed to the rafters with a HUGE range of tobaccos and of course a comfortable sampling lounge. We in a remote but idyllic location in Rollesby with easy parking and if the weather is nice we even have tables and chairs outside 🙂

IMG_3713We recently had our alcohol licence granted so now all of our premises are licenced for the sale of alcohol .That makes our tasting events even more fun as we try to match up great cigars with splendid single malt whiskies and / or Cuban rum.

norfolk_tasting_guestsThe lounge and shop were rather packed with local and regular Turmeaus clients who enjoyed H. Upmann Half Coronas and Bolivar Belgravia kindly supplied by Hunters & Frankau paired up with a magnificent range of single malt whiskies kindly supplied by Gordon & McPhail including:

norfolk_tasting_all_whiskies_cigarsTullibardine 500 Sherry Cask
Glen Scotia Double Cask
Glen Scotia Victoriana  This was an absolute winner in the pairings.
Speymalt from Macallan 2006
Linkwood 15 Year Old
Connoisseurs Choice Tormore 1997
Benromach 10 Year Old
Benromach 10 Year Old 100 Proof
Ledaig 1999

I wasn’t completely sure about the Bolivar Belgravia when it was first released but these cigars have now settled down into a divine smoking experience, light to medium strength but very full flavour. A perfect balance, beautiful wrappers and perfect construction.

norfolk_tasting_mealDespite the vast variety of canapes laid on for the event we manged to take the Turmeaus team of 12 out for dinner to the lovely Chinese over the road and ended the evening herfing Partagas Salomones with a bottle of Fettercairn 30 Year Old now that was a perfect pairing!

Thanks to Laura’s Team (including, James, Liam, Georgina, Imogen, Amy and our newest member Cally) for putting together such a wonderful event. I’m looking forward to the next one in a month or so.

The rest of my week has been filled with auction work as I put the finishing touches to the auction listings for the June 20th Vintage Cigar Auction. The catalogue is full and closed now and we are considering entries for the Winter sale.

I’m trying to limit entries to more interesting cigars going forward as well as close off the catalogue when it gets near the 300 Lot mark. I don’t think I have ever seen more rare or unique pre-embargo cigars as this sale. Truly breath taking. A range of single, boxes, cabinets and humidors that are simply magnificent one of a kinds.

Catalogue will be in print and Online around 2 weeks or so before the sale. Tickets for the event are available on this link but are almost sold out already. If you can’t make it to the Bulgari for the auction you will be able to bid online on the auction website as the sale will be live at the Bulgari and simultaneously online. We are always happy to provide condition reports to absentee bidders.

The weather is supposed to turn very hot this weekend and I’m planning on some serious car herfing with the “Car’ador” filled with some great smokes including:

El Rey del Mundo Demi Tasse (my standard breakfast smoke)
Cohiba Siglo VI (bit of a treat)
Bolivar Royal Coronas Orchant Seleccion (Simply awesome smokes)
Hoyo Epicure Especial (best in the Hoyo range I reckon)
Bolivar Belicosos 2007 Vintage (sweet as sugar)

And when I’m not driving ( of course!) I have a bottle of Towmore 1997 to compliment the smokes 🙂

Have a smokey weekend.

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

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