Buenos noches from Pabexpo where the 13th Festival gala dinner is taking place

Over 1500 aficionados,retailers,importers and Havana cigar devotees are enjoying the main event of the year in our industry

A celebration of the brand of Montecristo and the introduction to the trade of the Montecristo Gran Reserva which will be released in varnished cabinets of 15 cigars in the near future

The evening started with our goodie bag containing the Festival presentation case of 2 Monte Gran Reserva and a Monte 5 pre dinner, the second cigar is a Montecristo Open Master

My table is pretty close to the stage and I’m sitting next to Simon Chase of Hunters and Frankau 🙂 deja vu of the best type !

Great entertainment- singers and dancers non stop throughout the evening and a some pretty decent wines too, a slick event

The auction Lots are more outrageous than ever !…

Lot 1 : Upmann humidor 320 cigars including the new half coronas,Royal robustos,Noellas and Butifarras

Lot 2 : Hoyo humidor 300 cigars including Extravaganzas,Maravillas,Short Hoyo Piramides,Gran Piramides and Obsequios

Lot 3: Romeo humidor 300 cigars including Aguilas and Fabulosos no 6

Lot 4 Partagas humidor 350 cigars including Serie E no 2,Serie B and C as well as Serie P No 3

Lot 5 Montecristo humidor 350 cigars including Agulias,double coronas and Maravillas no 1

Lot 6 Robaina humidor 220 cigars including Maestros and Finuras

Lot 7 Cohiba humidor 400 cigars including Cohiba 1966,Robusto Especial and Sublimes Extra

Loads of photos to add to the website when I’m back in London on Monday !

Tomorrow I’ll be at the cocktail Party at Partagas and perhaps Tropicana in the evening….. its a tough job

Peaceful puffing

Saludos

Mitchell

____________________________________________________________________________________

Simon Chase is the auctioneer for Habanos SA and all proceeds are donated to the Cuban health system

Winning bids in Euros

Lot 1 52,000
2 65,000
3 85,000
4 60,000
5 75,000
6 40,000 unsold reserve not reached
7 450,000

Habanos awards

Production : Armando Trujillo Gonzales
Business : Dr Maximilliam Herzog
Communication : Adriano Martinez

Delighted to confirm that we will indeed start shipping orders this week of the UK Regional 2010 Por Larranaga Regalios de Londres 1200 boxes limited edition (numbered) 5 ½” length and 50 ring gauge

Singles £15.99

Box of 25 £399

Fabulous cigars as one would expect from importers Hunters and Frankau, splendid packaging, exclusive to the UK – what more could you ask for- get your orders in now and you could be smoking them before next weekend!

No idea when the other 2010 Uk regional Flor de Cano will arrive. Someone mentioned that it was not likely for this year and I think that may well be true now.

Our Winter 2010 – Vintage Cigar Auction is now confirmed for Tuesday 30th November on the splendid Cigar Terrace at Boisdale in Belgravia

The terribly nice ex Christies auctioneer Brian Ebbesen will be offering almost 300 Lots of Mature, Discontinued, Unusual, Davidoff, Dunhill, Pre Embargo and Limited Edition Havanas.

– Cigars, Champagne and canapés from 6.00-7.00pm

– Auction from 7.00pm – 8.30 pm

– More cigars, champagne and canapés 8.30 till 9.30 pm.

Chivas Regal 18 will be offered with the compliments of Pernod Ricard as well as complimentary miniatures of The Glenlivet 12, 15, 18 and Chivas 12 to all attendees

Bidders admitted by pre registration in advance only. Absentee bidding available online.

Online bidding opens Tuesday 19th October and closes 24 hours before the Auction sale

Hard copy catalogue available on request [email protected]

Click here to view our PDF Catalogue

Prospective bidders are encouraged to inspect Lots prior to auction at our London offices and absentee bidders are welcome to email and questions regarding the specific Lots or the auction sale generally.

Ron Morrison of Robert Graham Ltd came down from Scotland this week and we had a great evening at the Lanesborough cigar terrace on Wednesday (Monte 2’s and PSD4’s till 3 a.m. with some great Burgundy) and lunch at Dunhill on Thursday was a treat. We had some great smokes at the London West Hampstead cigar shop…. found a good quantity of Cohiba Behike of all sizes in the walk in humidor (a few less after we left!)

Works should complete at our new London warehouse this week and gosh am I ever looking forward to moving in! (or should I say moving the Girls over) I’m off to our Norfolk offices this week to herf with Laura and her team – congrats to Laura at her recent appointment as Director at C.Gars Ltd and finally big congrats to Michelle for her birthday this Tuesday 🙂

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Happy Friday Folks 🙂

I had the pleasure of dinner with a terribly famous film producer (he actually produced one of my all time favourite films !) at Boisdale on Wednesday evening. Needless to say we had a first class meal, some pretty decent wine and some splendid Monte 2’s 🙂 – and the Gentleman signed a great big movie poster for me to add to my collection.

Our additional London warehouse building works are coming along just fine and next week we expect the floors to be completed followed by the cabinet work the following week – we are so looking forward to spreading out – and we need to as I have another 1000 humidors arriving in 2 weeks time!

I zipped up to Liverpool last night and stayed in a lovely hotel opposite my shop – recommended. This morning I signed the contract for our second Liverpool shop which we start the refurb on Monday – and hope to open 4 weeks later 🙂 … and now we are looking for a 3rd Liverpool shop as we love Liverpool so much ! Turmeaus cigar shops have been in Liverpool since 1817

Popped into Turmeaus Cigar shop in Chester on the drive home and enjoyed a Romeo Wide Churchill. These cigars are really settling down now and fast becoming great smokes

Still no sign of the UK regional 2010 Por Larranaga ! Surely must arrive sometime soon or it will be 2011 !!!

Auction catalogue goes to the printers on Monday so we’ll be posting out copies from Wednesday at which time auction Lots will be online as well

Have a smoky weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Greetings from the organized chaos of my London office which has been
turned into a photographic studio for the last week by photographer
Tillman Pretscher. We have just about finished photographing and
cataloguing the Lots for the 30th November Vintage Cigar Auction which
has been a humungous task as there are some 250 Lots for sale which is
more than the last few auctions. Some look like ridiculous bargains ( I
wish I could bid !) I am so looking forward to working with auctioneer
Brian Ebbesen again on this event

From incredible pre embargo cigars to Dunhills, Davidoff, limited
edition, aged, rare and mature cigars- quite a selection. The auction
will be help at Boisdale Belgravia- my favourite cigar friendly hang out
to herf at. Catalogues available next week by post and of course online.
You can of course register online to bid on the night at Boisdale. I
gather from my Team that Boisdale are laying on canapes and copious
amounts of Champagne before and after the auction- well done Ranald,
what a class act.

The builders are still banging away at our new warehouse/office
premises and we are hopeful that we will start to move in there in the
next 2 weeks- that will be great timing as we have over 1000 humidors of
all sizes shapes and prices arriving in October from my IPCPR New
Orleans purchases in August.

All of this makes me feel like I need a holiday but I remember going to
Spain recently with co Director Karyn and as I presented the passports
to Easy Jet at check in ,the chap looked at Karyn and said ‘ ok you
changed your hair colour’, as he handed back our passports ( we had no
idea what he was talking about. ) We then handed our passports over at
the gate and were thanked and handed them back as we ‘Speedy boarded’
the aircraft. Finally we arrived at Malaga airport and presented our
passports to immigration who thanked us and handed them back. All sound
normal so far? Yes -until I looked at Karyns passport and realised that
it was in fact our daughters passport with a photo of her when she was 9
years old ! So much for airline security- simply too bad for words. So
after a well deserved cerveza and Montecristo no.2 we managed to get the
correct passport flown out to us and return to London a few days later
with correct passports!

Monday I’m seeing Michael Buble in concert at Wembley which should be
good as I’ve seen him before ( Earls Court) and enjoyed immensely –
Swing and cigars- perfect combo ( may have to wait till I get in the car
for the smokes though!)

Wednesday is dinner at Boisdale Belgravia with a terribly famous film
producer of one of my all time favourite gangster movies 🙂 great
excuse to get him to sign my movie poster. Then I can get it framed and
put it up next to some of my other old gangster movie posters.

Thursday I’m heading out to Turmeaus in Chester and Turmeaus in
Liverpool. We are about to redevelop the Liverpool shop and in fact open
two specialist shops side by side on Fenwick street ( one being where
our current shop is) that should give us some more floor space as well
as beautiful purpose built shops similar to our West Hampstead shop in
quality. This is my favourite part of being a specialist cigar retailer-
I love setting up the businesses and especially stocking up the walk in
humidors to see how many cigars I can end up fitting in the humidor (
usually quite a lot!)

Still waiting for the UK regional Por Larranaga to be released. We were
fairly certain that it would be September but that been and gone now
although I am fairly confident we will, get it this week. Good grief I
can’t wait to smoke that cheeky little smoke ! I love Larranaga 🙂
that said I would not hold your breath waiting for the Flor de Cano UK
regional release. I think we will be lucky to see it this side of
Christmas but hey ! we are talking about Cuba!- anything is possible and
most things impossible 🙂

…and finally. The last 2 weeks I have been utterly hooked on Monte 2’s.
There is a big time return to blending form on these cigars. Medium
strength but full flavour and remarkably sweet from start to finish.
Beautiful wrappers, perfect construction- a total winner.

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing.

Mitchell

I’m done in the London office for this week – off for holidays till Sunday now 🙂 took home a good stash of Punch Serie D’Oro no.1 which I seem to be smoking more and more of since Hunters told me recently they were getting pretty low on stock.

If you haven’t tried them yet you really should before it’s too late. These UK regionals have become so popular and the deserve to be. Today alone we sold some 20 boxes of the Punch. The good news is there will be a Punch Serie D’Oro no.1 limited edition humidor released as a UK market exclusive later this year. I’ll be reserving plenty for our Directors Reserve that’s for sure. These cigars are well balanced and great smokes now built have almost unlimited aging potential.

I scooted over to our La Casa del Habano in lovely Hamburg on Monday for the day to test out the German regional editions with my Partner Christoph Wolters. The Por Larranaga robusto is a most deliciously sweet smoke and the German regional Ramon Allones wasn’t too shabby either 🙂 especially when Christoph paired it up with a cheeky bottle of 1989 Bilecart Salmon 🙂

On to Tuesday and it was a spot of lunch and a smoke or two at Boisdale with Jemma Freeman of Hunters and Frankau J where I spotted famous retired boxer Chris Eubank. Offered the Champ a cigar but he doesn’t smoke cigars at this time. Regardless he was very nice and friendly! and I got him to autograph a copy of European Cigar Journal for my Father ( who is a bit of a boxing fanatic!)

So…. The news is that the UK regional Por Larrañaga “Regalias de Londres” are due out any day now. 5 ½” length and 50 ring gauge – I just can’t wait to try them out !!!!

The latest news – Vintage Cigar Auction

Our Winter 2010 – Vintage Cigar Auction is now confirmed for Tuesday 30th November on the splendid Cigar Terrace at Boisdale in Belgravia

We expect to offer almost 200 Lots of Mature, Discontinued, Unusual, Davidoff, Dunhill, Pre Embargo and Limited Edition Havanas.

Cigars, Champagne and canapés from 6.00-7.00pm
Auction from 7.00- 8.30 pm
More cigars, champagne and canapés 8.30 till 9.30 pm.

Bidders admitted by pre registration in advance only.
Absentee bidding available online.

Catalogue entries close end of September.
Online entries available till end October.

Online and hard copy catalogue available from second week October.  Email for your copy [email protected]

The builders are finally doing the fit out of our new London warehouse – 3 weeks time, life will return to normal so they assure me… and I’ll have twice the space to now 🙂 I think we will have to throw an opening herf.

Have a great rest of the week

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell