XVII Festival Habano

XVII FESTIVAL HABANO - FEBRUARY 2015
by Mitchell Orchant

By my reckoning this was the 16th out of 17 of the February Festivals I have attended. I was in Havana for the first one but too poor to buy a ticket to the gala dinner! It's been quite amazing to see the Festival develop, change and for the most part improve over the years and this year was no let down. 

So I went through my usual routine with plenty of pre-flight pampering in the Virgin lounge at Gatwick followed by a few glasses of Champagne to get me in the Festival mood. Sat myself down on the plane next to a Cuban young lady who seemed to be dancing to iPod music throughout the flight (very entertaining – maybe she was happy to get out of London's cold weather?!) 

Nice to bump in to Naomi Campbell and Paris Hilton at the Habana Libre. Paris is super pretty in real life (more so than in mags/on TV!) I wonder if she knew that the hotel was originally the Havana Hilton?! I managed to find a few decent antiques and magazines to add the collection and enjoyed mooching round the Convention Centre bumping into many old friends. Not sure why they don't put the air conditioning on though? It was pretty darn hot and humid!

The Gala Dinner was the usual incredible event at Pabexpo, apparently attended by some 1400 people! This year was a mega Montecristo 80th anniversary celebration and we were treated lots of Monte's including: Petit No. 2, Media Corona (surprisingly good), Edmundo, Churchill Anejados and 80th Aniversario (outstanding).

We understand that the 80th Aniversario Montecristo will be with us at some stage which is very exciting. I will try to keep calm though as we are still waiting for the Upmann No. 2 Reserva that was introduced to us at last year's Festival! Great and rather non-stop entertainment (too loud as usual) and some pretty decent Havana Club Seleccion de Maestros rum and a very warm welcome from Jorge Luis Fernandez Maique, the commercial vice president of Habanos S.A.

The Habanos Man of the Year award for communications was an interesting one as two of my friends were nominated with Gary Heathcott winning and Colin Ganley being the runner up as such. Well done to both of them.