Greetings from C.Gars London HQ where we are expecting a bit of a heatwave this week… perfect herfing weather 🙂

Last week I hosted the pre-release event for our new range of Orchant Seleccion by Drew Estate at Turmeaus Liverpool, followed by a further event at Turmeaus Chester the very next evening.

We were very proud to welcome Jonathan Drew (pictured to the right) as guest of honour for the evening and the crowded room enjoyed his very interesting insights on Drew Estate as well as cigar manufacturing in Nicaragua (it really is a huge company/factory/region!), the samples that we tested out were superb.

This new range will be available online and in all of our stores by the end of August and will be presented in packs of 10 in three sizes initially:

Lightweight: 3 ½” Length x 46 Ring Gauge
Middleweight: 4 ½” Length x 46 Ring Gauge
Heavyweight: 5 ¼” Length x 46 Ring Gauge

It took us quite some time to settle on the right blend but I feel we have totally nailed it. I reckon they will be super popular!

Completely hand crafted and made in Estelí:

Wrapper: Stalk Cut Havana grown in Connecticut
Binder: Indonesian Sumatra
Filler: Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Connecticut Broadleaf and Nicaragua
Strength: Medium to Full Bodied

Attendees were spoiled with our Chef’s canapes, Old Fashioned cocktails, Stalla Dhu Saorsa single malt whisky and quite a few Drew Estate cigars to sample including the Middleweight, a Lancero and a non-production A size Gran Corona. A great sampling event to say the least.

This week I’m heading to another sold out sampling event at our Knutsford branch which I am very proud to announce is now our second La Casa del Habano location (we expect to open more LCDH shops in the future too!).

We look forward to welcoming Yadira Bulnes of Hunters & Frankau as guests of honour to celebrate the opening. I have also now been informed that the person designated by the Cuban Embassador to represent her on the opening of the Casa is Mr. Guillermo Parera, Press and Culture Counselor. Mr. Julio Pujol will not be able to join us due to flying to Cuba early next morning.

C.Gars Ltd President Ron Morrison will be cutting the ribbon together with Yadira Bulnes, Corporate Director of Hunters & Frankau.

The premises consist of a cigar shop and walk in humidor with client lockers on the ground floor and a comfortable sampling lounge on the first floor. The full range of La Casa specialities including Coleccion Habanos books and limited edition humidors will be well represented.

LCDH Knutsford will be managed by Turmeaus tobacconist trained team Andrew, Liz and Sandra under the guidance of Sara and Calum (Master of Cigars) from LCDH Chester.

Opening a second La Casa del Habano is very important to our Group and allows us to continue our substantial growth in Havana cigars sales. It will enable us to have additional availability of La Casa specialities to satisfy our customers’ insatiable demand for the finest handmade cigars in the world.

In other news this week…

We are still experiencing some Havana cigar stock shortages including all sizes of BHK’s, Piramides Extra, Siglo VI in 10’s though 25’s seem to be coming back in small quantity. Bolivar Soberanos and Super Coronas are sold out by the importers and our stocks are almost exhausted.

El Rey del Mundo La Reina UK regional editions continues to be our fastest selling cigar of all time. We are continuously sold out though we are still accepting orders as we are expecting further allocations.

If you are one of the lucky clients to have been allocated the incredible 1790 Humidor, then well done you 🙂 it really is a masterpiece filled with the most incredible cigars. We may make an additional one available in the near future. Email me for details. [email protected]

H&F aged release allocations have now been confirmed. They are very tight and in all fairness there were only a few boxes of each aged cigar available and no doubt much demand from the UK cigar trade. I’m not yet sure if we will be releasing them or I will be smoking them #joke 😀

We are now listing Lots for our September auction, email my auction team if you need any advice.

Short week for me as I’m heading to Bristol on Thursday and Friday to celebrate my daughters graduation (Double First in Spanish and French!), I think I will be firing up a Davidoff Dom Perignon to celebrate.

Next Monday I’ll be taking the car for a blast to our Norfolk HQ and Turmeaus Norfolk for the day to wrap up our quarterly Marketing Team meetings… it has been an astonishing quarter for C.Gars Group so my thanks to Laura, James and their brilliant Team… then I’m off to L.A. for the Summer… back sometime in September 🙂

Have a smokey week,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell