Greetings from my smoking cigar sampling office, nice to be back into routine and what a fab routine I have 🙂

I invited some of my original staff from my hotel business days to enjoy an evening at Puffin’ Rooms last week. I was in the hotel business with my father way back in the 1980’s and it’s amazing that the girls kept in touch with me.

We had a brilliant reunion and whilst enjoying Chef Chris’s amazing cuisine and a few bottles of champagne, it was brilliant to catch up as well as remarkable to 1) see how good the girls memories were (a lot of very funny stories!) and 2) how gorgeous the girls look, hardly aged! I’m told I was a nice boss and we certainly had a lot of laughs together and still do! Looking forward to seeing  Joanne, Mandy, Sandra and Amanda at our next reunion 🙂

I spent some time at Turmeaus Norfolk this week where we are planning to open our new headquarters later this year. This ambitious expansion is super exciting for all of our team as we plan the next few year’s growth for C.Gars Group. I can’t believe we will be up to 70 employees by the end of the year. It’s been a staggering year so far and clearly cigar smoking is more popular than ever. (TY dear clients!)

Our chairman Ron and I planned out the new walk in humidor, retail shop and two sampling lounges with the building contractor and I think it’s really going to be something special. We have loved being at Hall Farm for many years but have totally outgrown our current premises and our sales, marketing and IT Teams have grown dramatically over the years and will be moving to super comfortable high tech offices.

We have  stuck to the same ethos of employing kids out of school or college and didn’t judge on academic ability necessarily but judged the individual based on the potential we could see to train, mentor and develop them into a valued team member. It’s paid off well and we have incredibly competent and dedicated staff with very low staff turnover for a company of our size.

Back to London and a quick inspection/herfette at our lovely little Turmeaus Mayfair shop in the heart of Mayfair yesterday. This store is having its best year ever and was incredibly busy when I visited. We sampled Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Shorty cigars and Inca Secret Blend Roca with some Orchant Selection cigar malt whisky with a few clients before moving on to The Lanesborough (still my favourite place to herf in London) and changed the pace up to Ramon Specially Selected and Bolivar Belicosos Finos.

Havana cigar supply is still patchy with no sign of BHK’s or Siglo VI, though Lanceros, Corona Especiales and Esplendidos have made a reappearance albeit in very small quantity. Cohiba Piramides Extra (one of my favourite day time cigars) have also gone out of stock at the importer but we have pretty deep stocks so should be able to keep them available for a while longer. All very frustrating…

One of our bestselling small format Havanas is the Upmann Corona Junior Tubed. Years ago we sold these untubed as the Petit Upmann but they were deleted sadly. Apparently they have now had to be renamed Coronas J as it’s against the law to use the word Junior on a tobacco product. Have you ever heard anything quite so absurd?

The September 16^th auction catalogue is finished and should be online in around a weeks’ time. This was supposed to be a small sale but its ended up a rather large 330 Lot sale with a great selection of aged, rare, regional, limited, Davidoff, pre embargo Lots entered.

My marketing team have gone a bit OCD with Colibri and DuPont lighters, listing huge ranges at guaranteed unbeatable prices in the UK.

The warm summer weather seems to be continuing in the UK so I’m planning to get the top off the car, have a rather long weekend of car herfing and visit one or two of my favourite pubs!

In my baggie for the weekend:

Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Shorty – sweet as sugar
Oliva Orchant Seleccion Chubby – sophisticated and delightful blend
Montecristo Petit Edmundo – a return to form for this cigar after a period of being a bit disappointing
Davidoff 50^th Anniversary Diademas Finas – what a treat!
Monte 2 – long-time favourite
Avo Syncro – I love these!
Partagas SD No. 4 – can’t go wrong!

Have a smokey weekend,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

Well I’m back from a rather long break in sunny California 🙂 So far so good, except I came back to some idiot smashing one of the windows at our rather lovely La Casa del Habano Chester. Apparently the idiot told the police he had no idea how it happened. So well done and thank you to Cheshire police and hopefully some justice when this goes to court.

My US trip kicked off with a few fabulous days (and evenings)  at the IPCPR tobacco trade show in Las Vegas. I enjoyed meeting with some of our favourite cigar manufacturers and visiting their stands to see all the latest planned products for the year ahead.

It’s really one big herf and super fun testing out the product 🙂

I spent plenty of time with Regius Cigars, one of my favourite boutique brands and I’m delighted to introduce the 2018 Orchant Seleccion limited editions which are not only ridiculously good value but super popular with our clients:

Regius Seleccion Orchant Robusto – 4 1/2″ x 52
Regius Seleccion Orchant Hermosos – 5″ x 48
Regius Seleccion Orchant Campana – 5 1/2″ x 52

Regius are made by Nestor Plasencia and are a full flavour Nicaraguan smoke that smoke very well straight out of the box as they are already well matured, but also age very well indeed.

We also introduced Plasencia cigars to the UK market and the initial client reaction exceeded our expectations.

Plasencia Reserva Original Nestico Cigar – 1 Single – 4 1/2″ x 36
Plasencia Reserva Original Robusto Cigar – 1 Single – 4 1/2″ x 52
Plasencia Reserva Original Toro Cigar – 1 Single – 6″ x 50
Plasencia Alma Fuerte Generacion V Cigar – 1 Single – 7 ” x 58
Plasencia Alma Del Campo Tribu Cigar – 1 Single – 5″ x 52
Plasencia Alma del Campo Sendero Cigar – 1 Single – 5″ x 52
Plasencia Alma Fuerte Sixto II Cigar – 1 Single – 6″ x 60

I was privileged to be invited to the Alec Bradley distributors dinner again (even though I’m a retailer!) and had a great evening with the AB Team as well as Scott from Tor and Steve from Robert Graham Ltd. After the dinner we moved on to the Davidoff Bar which also hosted a 50^th anniversary event that we gate crashed 🙂

Our Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion range is one of the most exciting and successful projects I have developed. These stunning smokes are now firmly in our best seller lists and we are planning range extensions before the end of the year.

Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Shorty Cigar – 5″ x 50
Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Chubby Cigar – 4″ x 60
Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Skinny Cigar – 5″ x 43

The Davidoff booth was humungous as usual and the UK sales of Davidoff and Avo brands are growing at a frightening rate for us! Perfect quality and great blends. Avo is an exclusive brand for C.Gars in the UK and we are very proud to represent it.

We have a limited allocation of the magnificent Davidoff 50^th Anniversary Diademas Jars but when they are gone… they are gone as its truly a limited edition.

I also visited Oliva cigars who make our exclusive range of Oliva Orchant Seleccion cigars:

Oliva Orchant Seleccion Skinny – 5″ x 43
Oliva Orchant Seleccion Shorty – 5″ x 50
Oliva Orchant Seleccion Chubby – 4″ x 60

I can’t seem to import enough Arturo Fuente Cigars to cope with demand! These super premium cigars are incredible smokes and we have the exclusive for the UK.

I also visited Scandinavian Tobacco who supply our exclusive Mitchellero range of cigars that are an exceptionally popular budget Nicaragua cigar made by Nestor Plasencia. Oh! and we also have the UK exclusive for Macanudo cigars 🙂

Mitchellero Chicos Cigar – 4″ x 30
Mitchellero Grandes Cigar – 4″ x 60
Mitchellero Orchies Cigar – 4″ x 52
Mitchellero Perlas Cigar – 4″ x 38
Mitchellero Sporty Cigar – 5″ x 38

Scandinavian Tobacco recently announced the acquisition of Peterson Pipes. A marriage of two brilliant companies. We love Peterson pipes and probably have the largest range and definitely the best prices in the UK.

Finally I visited our partners at Cigar Oasis, another brand that we represent exclusively in the UK. Awesome products and a great company to work with.

Cigar Oasis Electronic Humidifier – Ultra – 100 capacity
Cigar Oasis Electronic Humidifier – Excel – 300 capacity
Cigar Oasis Electronic Humidifier – Plus – 1,000 capacity
Cigar Oasis Electronic Humidifier – Magna – Cabinet humidors

Reading back all of the above exclusives I shouldn’t be surprised at our sales growth this year. C.Gars truly have the biggest and best range in the UK. I dare say the amazing heatwave in the UK didn’t harm summer sales levels as many of our clients like to smoke outdoors. I hope the great weather continues…

The rest of my trip was taken up with copious amounts of herfing with friends all over LA. I have an amazing crowd of friends who throw the best herfs imaginable. My New York “Rat Pack” smoking chums all flew in to herf and hang out for a week as well! … I think I need a vacation now!

Back to Blighty and putting the finishing touch to our September Auction Catalogue. This looks  like a pretty big 300 Lot catalogue again with a good variety of aged and rare, limited and regionals, as well as Pre-Embargo Havana cigars.

I’ll be visiting Turmeaus Liverpool and Puffin’ Rooms on Wednesday. Looking forward to catching up with friends and clients for the best live music and cocktails, and a late night cigar sampling session at Turmeaus Late Hour Cigar Shop & Sampling Lounge.

Have a smokey week,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

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

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dad’s out there and what better way to celebrate than with a good cigar and a dram of single malt whisky? No better way 🙂

That’s exactly how I’ll be enjoying the day with my father… Monte 2’s and Stalla Dhu Ben Nevis single cask scotch whisky.

My Dad has been enjoying Monte 2’s for many years and though he moans and grumbles that the blend is ‘not quite the same’ as it was years ago, he just keeps going back to them! I always remember when I was in my teens and my Dad was chomping away on Monte 2’s whilst he gave me Saint Luis Rey Regios as he said I would look ridiculous smoking a Monte 2 lol.

My daughter has some secret / surprise plans for me in the evening as well so all in all it should be a great Father’s Day 🙂

Here are a few suggestions from our Father’s Day bestselling gifts this year:

• Dalmore Whisky and Cigar Pairings – available with either the luxurious Davidoff Orchant Seleccion Lancero, the “perfect gift cigar” Sancho Panza Sancho Coffin box, or with a selection of some of the best cigars. View the range here.
• If your dad is not a fan of cigar and whisky pairings (madness!), we currently have some amazing pipes on special offer, be quick though as there’s not many left! Find them here.
• We’ve also just massively increased our range of Colibri Accessories, including these very sleek sets which have been flying off the shelves as they just make the ideal gift.

I zoomed up to Turmeaus Liverpool last Sunday for an incredible Davidoff awards event. Around 30 of my team were presented with certificates for completing and passing their Davidoff training course.

We sampled Davidoff Short Perfectos and Davidoff Nicaraguan Box Pressed Robusto, paired up with Remy Martin 1738 and tonic cocktails. What can I say other than, WOW! What an incredibly crisp, fresh and smooth pairing. Those who haven’t tried a Remy Martin and tonic cocktail, get yourself a bottle and give it a go, I never thought I’d enjoy it that much! Our Chef served up a splendid lunch as ever, he certainly knows a thing or two about how to get the perfect flavour balance, an in our industry, that’s very important! After the award ceremony we retired to Puffin’ Rooms to enjoy the unmissable Victoria Sharpe tinkling the ivories.

Davidoff are a huge success story for C.Gars Group and the sales have gone ballistic for us over the last year. The ranges that they have introduced are quite superb as is the presentation. My favourites are 702 and Late Hour. I can’t ever remember a single complaint about these delightful cigars. Top quality blends and the finest construction. Needless to say, we have the largest range and stocks as well as the best prices in the UK.

We also exclusively represent the Avo range (Davidoff brand) and will be releasing a very special limited edition Orchant Seleccion, later this year. Avo have only been in our range for the last year but are already well established in our top 10 best selling premium cigars. Thy are great value to say the least.

Amazing to get so many of my staff together from so many different locations. In fact that was only around half of the team as we now employee some 60 persons though it looks like we will have over 70 staff by the end of the year.

We finally completed the purchase of our new and rather super-duper 7000 square foot headquarters building in Norfolk. The building is a magnificent 200 year old property over 4 floors with original exposed wooden beams. The building contractors will be cracking away over the Summer and we expect to move in well before Christmas.

This expansion will feature a more substantial retail Turmeaus specialist cigar and whisky shop than we have now. It will also have a cigar sampling lounge that will be far better than our current lounge. We are planning to have a whisky room, a pipe room and of course a walk in humidor crammed to the ceiling with premium Havanas, Davidoff, Oliva, Alec Bradley, Inka – Secret Blend, Fuente to name a few of the ranges.

We will have tons of parking available and will be holding weekly tasting events. C.Gars Ltd have in fact had an address in Norfolk since way back in 1997 . The expansion of our business really does amaze me and I’m very proud of Laura and her team that we have been able to make this happen.

The summer auction Lots are now live online and bidding is open, the auction ends on the 19^th June. It’s easy to get in on the action and basically works much like eBay… think of it as cBay! Our next auction is planned for the 2^nd December but it’s very likely we will also hold a sale in September as we have so much demand.

Some of my favourite Lots in this sale include:

H Upmann Dunhills Seleccion No. 50

Rafael Gonzales Coronas Inmensas

H. Upmann Coronas Jar

Ramon Allones Petit Coronas Miniature

Trinidad 40^th Anniversary Humidor

My auction team are online 24/7 [email protected] to advise if you have any queries or require condition reports.

We’ve added a huge range of Colibri lighters to the website best prices in the UK guaranteed.

If you haven’t tried my Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion cigars it’s about time you did! The sweetest blend and the best construction. Incredible value. I can’t stop herfing them. In fact I herfed the Shorty and Chubby with a cheeky pint of bitter at the pub last night!

Have a smoky week,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell