I think I may have just broken the herfing record, and if not, I have certainly been trying my best to. LOL.

I’m in Los Angeles for the Summer as usual but have also been at the IPCPR trade show in Las Vegas last week. It was insanely hot in Vegas and I even had to take Uber from the hotel to the convention centre ( a 5 minute walk!)

Anyway, back to the point… the trade show is one of the largest in the world and fortunately you are allowed to enjoy smoking cigars as you walk round the exhibitor stands so essentially you are herfing your way round the show whilst trying to do deals on new products. Not a bad way of spending a day or three 🙂

I visited many of our fabulous partners at the show including:

Arturo Fuente – Truly the Rolls Royce of premium cigars and exclusive to C.Gars in the UK.
Oliva – If you haven’t tried the Orchant Seleccion range…you are seriously missing out as they are first rate.
Alec Bradley – Our Orchant Seleccion range is now one our most successful cigars ever!
Cigar Oasis – Exclusive to C.Gars, this range of products is superb for the serious cigar enthusiasts.
Macanudo – Exclusive to C.Gars in the UK- fabulous value, superb quality.
Regius – Our favourite boutique brand, Orchant Seleccion range available in the UK and the USA. Made by Plasencia and incredibly good value.
Davidoff and Avo – I love these brands, probably the best construction and finest blending money can buy. Our exclusive Davidoff Lancero Orchant Seleccion is the best cigar we have ever been involved with.

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No sign of any other UK cigar merchants being spotted at the show. Probably the reason C.Gars has all the latest accessories and cigars? Yes, quite probably, lol.

After the show the herfing continues with aperitifs at the Davidoff lounge followed by the Alec Bradley dinner on Sunday and Sinatra’s at the Wynn on Monday.

Great to hang out with our partners Steve Johnstone of Robert Graham Ltd, Akhil from Regius cigars, Scott Vines from Tor Imports and Keith & Lindsay Allen from Tabac World.

I thought the show was not as bizzy buzzy this year, which was fine by me as it was easy to blast round all the stands. We have some very exciting new projects that will come to fruition over the next 6 months.

Zooming back to L.A. on the Tuesday and straight over to Gran Havana Room for a wonderful dinner herf (thank you P.L.) with some of my best pals and smoking chums from both Los Angeles and New York. (Yup… my Rat Pack pals flew over to C.A. to herf)

I had planned to have a day off on Wednesday but that didn’t quite work out as friends and clients descended on the hotel pool area for another 10 hours of herfing by the pool 🙂 I think we may well have drank all the Champagne the hotel had lol.

Finally (for last week at least) it was time for the legendary annual San Diego herf (thank you V.C.) a monumental all day / evening event for around 70 attendees. We had perfect weather, delicious lunch and dinner, opera singing entertainment and copious amounts of cigars. Truly the best herf with some of my best friends on the annual schedule.

Our multi award winning Orchant Seleccion Cigar Malt Whisky featured at this event and I was quite overwhelmed by the amount of compliments about this Scotch. That said it is a huge success story, great value and perfect with a premium cigar. We literally can’t keep the shops stocked up fast enough with it.

I’m taking a couple of days R&R now (I think I deserve it!), then back to a full on herf schedule with friends all over L.A.

Have a great week.

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

Greetings from heatwave London 🙂 I can’t remember such a prolonged period of simply amazing weather (can you tell I’m English / weather obsessed?!) Well, there are two things I love doing; 1. herfing, and 2. driving. So, you can imagine what a fun Summer I’m having so far 🙂

No fun when the air conditioning broke down at Turmeaus Mayfair last week, but fortunately we had the entire system replaced a few hours later (pretty important for the huge stocks of cigars!)

The weather has kept sales soaring (thank you dear customers!) I’m thinking: outdoor smoking / BBQ’s / car herfing / sunshine makes you want to herf more 🙂 – who knows? I can only say that we are going through some crazy sales volumes and packing orders 24/7 – 7 days a week to get your smokes and booze to you on time.

Talking of booze, our rather deelish brand of Stalla Dhu single malt whisky seems to be picking up more and more awards. The Ben Nevis is my favourite and quite stunning.

The Orchant Seleccion Cigar Malt also has a silver award. It’ the perfect pairing with a premium cigar – we’re going through mountains of the stuff every week!

Our Summer auction was another successful sale with a very high sale rate. Good quality limited and regional editions continued to attract strong bidding and prices achieved. Pre Embargo prices looked a bit mushy to me with patchy interest and up and down results indicating a thin market. Millennium jars which were super-hot over the last few years passed which was a surprise. Prices on humidors were as expected.

We have two more auctions planned for this year in September and December for a total of 5 sales this year which I think is a record in the cigar world. Always happy to advise – just drop the auction team an email at [email protected]

The new H. Upmann Connoisseur B has just arrived and I’m smoking one right now 😀 Measuring in at 5 7/8″ length and 54 ring gauge, this is truly a flavour bomb and probably the best new Upmann I have tried in a long time. Recommended.

We have just made some more Cohiba 1966 Limited edition boxes. English Market Selection from 2011 available. Amazing smokes!

We have started the works on our new fabbie headquarters building. This beautiful 244 year old historic listed building is one of our most ambitious expansion projects yet and the whole team are very excited about it. C.Gars President Ron Morrison, our architect from the brilliant Liverpool firm Brock Carmichael, and I visited last week and started to plan the layout of the new premises. Note to self: change smoke detectors to heat detectors… yes of course we set the fire alarms off whilst testing out one of the sampling rooms.

Last week we held tasting events at Turmeaus Liverpool and Chester. The samplings featured Michter’s whisky, Kavalan Scotch, and Oliva cigars. Sold out events as ever. In fact two sessions sold out at Chester. My thanks to Brain Shapiro from Oliva cigars who kindly zipped over from New York to talk about the wonderful range of Oliva cigars.

Spammy message from my sales and marketing teams… We have a humongous range of Colibri lighters… of course at the lowest prices in the UK.

Okay, so it’s July (unbelievable fast first half of the year!) and its bloody hot in London, so I’m off to Los Angeles(!) until the end of August. I’m looking forward to the annual IPCPR cigar trade show in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks’ time and already planning some more exclusive Orchant Seleccion cigars as well as scouting for the latest cool cigar accessories. I’m looking forward to attending some great herfs with friends all over California… my kinda Summer.

Have a smokey week,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell