Last day in the office for a week or so as I leave the rainy, windy weather of London and head to sunny Los Angeles 🙂 A little R&R and a little work on Inca – Secret Blend project, destined for the US market sometime in the near future. My kinda vacation, sunshine and smokes 🙂 Mainly Davidoff short perfectos which have become sort of a go to smoke when I’m in the USA, great size and shape, sweet blend and always a perfect draw

A warm welcome to Liam, our newest member of staff at our Norfolk offices. Liam’s brief is to ensure that our products have the best prices in the UK and to check all competitors 7 days a week 🙂 So if you find a lower price that he’s missed  just shoot us an email and we’ll gladly price match or make our prices even lower! <insert maniacal laugh>

Liam’s line Manager, James from our Marketing Team has been having fun putting together some wild mixed box and unusual box offers for our newsletter subscribers this week and we have been amazed at the popularity with orders up 40%! Certainly keeping my London Team busy packing and shipping, we couldn’t even see the door for packages yesterday!!!

Our Rose street Edinburgh branch has had the walk in humidor rebuilt band it’s now double the size so it has a bigger range of cigars than ever. Hope to have some great photos for the website from lovely Manageress, Jo. In the next 24 hours.

Jo and Danilio are passionate about cigars and are always on hand for some helpful advice and recommendations and our shop has a great as well as quirky range of single malt whisky as well as a comprehensive range of pipes and pipe tobacco.

Our little Mayfair outpost is also going through a retrofit with the addition of new cabinets over the next week or two just to make it a little more cute than it already is. Mayfair may be small but it has a super range or premium cigars including many of the limited editions past and present. (It also sells pipes, tobaccos and single malt whisky and you can sample in store!)

I was invited by my old chum Robert Emery to have a smoke at the new Dunhill shop at 1 St James’s earlier in the week and all I can say is WOW. What an absolutely splendid humidor, sampling lounge and shop. Classier than classy, super comfortable and a great range of aged and rare cigars too. Well worth a visit if you are in Town and C.Gars wish them all the very best for a long and successful future.

Yesterday was my annual briefing at Hunters & Frankau headquarters which as always was interesting and exciting as we were updated about all the planned releases of new cigars (some still top secret!) for this year, but after a very long afternoon, Michelle and I found ourselves in an even longer traffic jam due to the train strike/rush hour/rain/mad drivers! We persevered and just about made it on time for  some serious herfing at The Wellesley with some overseas clients and friends.

One of my Pals offered me an incredible Dunhill Ramon Allones Seleccion Suprema No. 82 pre embargo which I can tell you I nubbed till there was just about nothing left! This cigar was so sweet and complex even I was amazed how perfect a smoking experience it was. Possibly one of the best Havanas I have ever smoked. It’s all down to storage of course ‘colder and dryer’ slow down that maturing process and its incredible how the cigars improve over the long term (always assuming good vintage in the first place as a bad vintage will only become an aged bad vintage cigar)

We followed the Dunhill Seleccion with Cohiba BHK54’s which are smoking like a dream and paired them up with some excellent Argentinian Malbec. I reckon the Wellesley staff must be some of the best trained in the business, right up to ‘Master of Cigars’ exams passes. They are always on hand to advise and are a really good bunch of Guys.

Ok that’s the news for now and I’m outta here to pack my perfectos and my sunglasses!

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

I actually manage to amuse myself by how much work I can do over the course of a week, in fact I can still tear around like I did 20 years ago and more important – I still enjoy every minute of every day. ‘Not bad for an old boy’ I hear some of my friends saying 🙂

So, my week started on Sunday with a visit to our gorgeous Robert Graham shop in Cambridge where Davidoff have just installed a sooper dooper new walk in humidor adjacent to the sampling lounge.

I spent half a day merchandising the humidor with a delightful range of premium cigars, hopefully our customers will agree it’s a step up from the last version of the walk in humidor. Needless to say, I was sampling Davidoff Nicaraguan Toro’s whilst merchandizing the humidor 🙂 We will be stocking an extensive range of our favourite Davidoff cigars over the next week or so. In fact outside of the lovely Davidoff shop in central London, this will be the best range in the UK.

Our Cambridge shop has a mouth-watering range of premium cigars, pipe tobaccos, single malt whisky wine and champagne and chocolates as well as a super helpful retail Team headed up by Cailin Morrison (my Partner Ron’s son) I’m looking forward to organizing some great Davidoff cigars tastings in March.

Monday and I zoomed off to Italy for the day. I searched for a particular restaurant that I had heard has a comfortable outdoor smoking area but the taxi couldn’t find it! So I stopped at another restaurant with an outside seating area but after 4 attempts at lighting the patio heaters, the staff gave up as they realised all the gas bottles were empty!

They then very kindly invited us to enjoy lunch with our cigars inside the restaurant. I reckon that was very nice of them as well as super illegal/breaking the smoking ban so I won’t mention the name of the restaurant… But I will go there again in future! We smoked our way through some 1986 Davidoff Dom Perignon paired up with a couple of bottles of Ruinart Rose to celebrate a very successful business transaction.

Wednesday and it was time to head up North by Virgin trains to visit Turmeaus cigar shops in Liverpool and Chester. First class is rather civilized on the train and there’s Wi-Fi on-board which is pretty fast so I thought great opportunity to do some site testing on the new iPad… Only to find that my website is blocked for inappropriate content by Virgin! Shock! Horror! Don’t they know that cigars are a legal product?!?! How ridiculous.

I decided it would be a ‘Cohiba day’ and smoked a robusto, Siglo IV and Genios whilst visiting the Turmeaus shops. I love the contrast between the modern Liverpool Turmeaus shop and the very traditional Turmeaus Chester shop. Both have a comprehensive range of premium cigars, pipe tobaccos and plenty of accessories.

And yes… You are welcome to sample in store and chat to the very knowledgeable staff including my lovely Liverpool Manageress who started in cigar retail with me many years ago and Calum in Chester who is one of the few cigar specialist in the UK who has passed his Master of Cigars exam! Calum’s a very bright chap and terribly enthusiastic about cigars so we are sending him on some additional training to Havana next month with kind assistance of UK importers Hunters & Frankau.

I also bumped in to another Calum in Chester – the young Gentleman who sprung for the £40,000 Regius cigar. Calum has just returned from Nicaragua where special Regius cigars were blended and made to his own taste and specification. I really should plan on a trip to Nicaragua sometime soon.

Thursday and I was heading back to the airport for a long day at our Hamburg La Casa del Habano. I smoked Bolivar 109’s with Christoph and bumped into one of my earliest herfing chums Keith (Cap’n Keith) who was also in Town for a few hours. We managed to squish in a bottle of Champagne whilst chatting about business so it’s fair to say a rather good day was had by all 🙂

This week’s raspberry goes to the stupid politicians who are wasting their time and no doubt our money by trying to legislate to ban smoking in cars where children are passengers. A law that would not be possible to govern and manage and are people really so thick as to smoke with children in the car?!

We are very busy planning of our next auction which will be a huge online auction with over 250 Lots expected to be listed and sold on the Online Auction website… Think of it as a sort of cBay instead of eBay! We have a wonderful variety of Lots entered including Davidoff, Dunhill, Pre embargo, aged, rare, mature and limited edition. We also have some interesting singles selections and part boxes so there’s something for everyone’s budget that you won’t find in your local cigar shop!

Time to chill out for a quiet weekend and kick back with some decent Ailein Mor single malt and a box of La Flor de Cano Gran Cano UK regional edition smokes 🙂

Have a great weekend,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell

Well the good news is that I have just about survived the week in the office whilst Michelle has been very busy sunning herself in Havana. 🙂

By all accounts and the nonstop photo’s she has been taunting me with, she’s had a wonderful time. Mish has visited El Laguito (the Cohiba factory) as well as Pinar del Rio, she has partied at Tropicana and herfed her way through just about every cigar shop in Havana. Throw in a Daiquiri or two at Floridita and it’s fair to say…it’s been a good trip. But oh boy…do I ever miss her as do many of her clients who were not happy speaking to me and only wanted the lovely Michelle!

The bad news is that Michelle won’t be able to see her desk for the paperwork when she returns lol.

Gloomy weather in London this week but I’ll be off to California in a couple of weeks’ time and am looking forward to some good sunshine herfing with friends.

Not too much time for herfing this week with Michelle out of the office but did manage to sneak in an office herf last night with my regular smoking chums, Dov, Tim and Nick (you’ll recognize Nick as he’s the ‘face of C.Gars’ and appears on just about every page of the website – handsome devil!). Yes, professional model Nick Shaw is a cigar smoker and one of our chums. 🙂

We spent the late afternoon/evening enjoying cash strength Treasurer single malts from the Robert Graham range. Including Deanston 1994 and Aucroisk 1996. Both whiskies were exceptionally good and matched up with some outrageously good and well matured Partagas SD No. 4 Reserva and Cohiba Seleccion Reserva Robustos. Both cigars have matured to perfection and were delightful smokes. Fair to say a great evening was had by all.

So the subject of this week’s blog is I love Davidoff J, not only do I love the cigars (especially the Nicaraguan range and the Puro D’Oro range) but it’s also such a pleasure working in partnership with Davidoff. Regular clients at our Robert Graham – Cambridge shop will be most impressed to see the new Davidoff walk in humidor that has just been installed as it looks quite breathtakingly beautiful.

Due to much demand we will be substantially increasing the range of Davidoff cigars available in Cambridge over the coming weeks.

Not content to strop there, the jolly nice folks at Davidoff are now in the process of installing some magnificent cigar humidor cabinets at the front of the new and rather huge Robert Graham shop in Glasgow to ensure that we can offer our clients a most comprehensive range of Davidoff cigars.

Apologies to our Inka-Secret Blend clients who have been disappointed that some of their favourite sizes have sold out but don’t worry I have another 50,000 cigars about to land in the UK so all sizes will be back on the shelves as such very soon. We just struggle to keep up with the popularity of this range. Should I be surprised?! Unbelievable value and a superb sweet, rich blend 100% made by hand in Peru.

I’m racing through to our lovely Turmeaus cigar shops in Liverpool and Chester next week and hope to bump in to some of our regular clients whilst there. Looking forward to putting together some great cigar tasting evenings as soon as the weather turns a little milder.

Can’t keep up with the Havana cigar sales these days, popularity of some of the new cigars like H Upmann Connoisseur A, Partagas Gran Reserva and Hoyo Grand Epicure to name a few have overwhelmed us and supply has been very tight. Fear not as our friends at importer Hunters and Frankau tell me they do expect some more stocks to arrive in the near future, we will keep you all posted.

More Regius – Turmeaus Limited Edition Robustos and Culebras now released. Unbeatable quality and value premium Nicaraguan cigars. Buy them while you can!

We are expecting (due to popular demand) this year’s Alec Bradley Filthy Hooligans (love the name!)…if you subscribe to the newsletter, you get priority of course. These sold out in days last year……you have been warned!

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Well that’s it… Michelle is off for a week to sunny Havana with her husband Harry whilst I am left to run the business or at least pretend to know what I am doing!

It’s very, very quiet in the office without Michelle, goodness knows she rarely stops talking 🙂 Oh well will have to cope as best I can, I just don’t know what I will do without Mishie fussing around me as I am sort of spoilt, well actually very spoilt! It starts off in the mornings with Michelle selecting cigars that I need to sample throughout the long days we work at the office, continues with espresso’s appearing on my desk every hour or so and of course any serious and complicated business issues – yup, she takes care of all of that too!

Michelle is staying at the Hotel Nacional, visiting Pinar del Rio and hopefully getting a factory tour as well. No doubt she’ll be herfing in all of my favourite cigar lounges and getting a bit of well-deserved sunshine as well.

Thinking about it, I can’t wait till the Festival next month. A celebration of the brands of Partagas, Hoyo, Trinidad and Upmann attended by around 2000 cigar aficionados from around the world.

We’re still working 24 hours a day to finish off our new website which is looking rather swish may I say and by the time you read this blog it will be live 🙂 Very Grateful for any feedback as we have been working on this website and its functionality and features for ages so the feedback will be very helpful.

Popped into the lovely Wellesley hotel cigar terrace with friends on Wednesday evening and herfed our way through a couple of BHK56’s which were perfection.

I’m on a new year’s diet (as usual) so kept off the cocktails and opted for a glass of Chablis which paired up nicely with the Cohiba cigars. I reckon I should publish my new diet ‘The Chablis and Cohiba Diet’ no fat/vegetarian/low calorie… And guaranteed to make you happy as well as slimmer! Then I’ll come out with a DVD to cash in on the concept 🙂

Scott from Tor popped into Turmeaus shops in Chester and Liverpool this week and I hear he’s planning some more cigars tasting evenings in March. Hopefully I’ll be able to get over there for them. Tor have some of the best-selling brands in the UK including Padron, Oliva and Alec Bradley to name a few.

It always amazes me how different countries have completely different cigar smoking culture. This week I had clients from Japan and Hong Kong visiting the office. The Japanese Gentlemen told me there’s no smoking ban in Japan (bravo) and he smokes just about everywhere including his home. The gentleman from Honk Kong told me they have a fairly similar smoking ban in Hong Kong as the UK and whilst he smokes at home, he only smokes on his balcony. An American client who popped in told me that despite having a rather large home he would not dream of smoking at home and only smokes outside (not much fun in Winter!) and even more sadly he doesn’t want to upset his kids so he has stopped smoking cigars in his car.

Not sure if I am unique but I always thought an Englishman’s home is his castle and I enjoy nothing better than a cigar and a single malt by the roaring fire in my lounge at home, I also enjoy smoking a cigar in my car as my Twitter followers no doubt know! Fortunately we have quite a few splendid cigar terraces in London and comfortable outside smoking areas around the country too, so I am never too far away from a relaxing  and tasty cigar.

I like having a cigar in the garden when weather permits so I’m building a sort of herfing area complete with summer house, fire pit and rocking chairs for when my cigar smoking chums come over to herf in the Spring and Summer. Will put some photos on the blog when it’s completed in a few weeks’ time. Should be pretty cool.

There’s some daft consultation happening about the ‘standardized packaging’ of tobacco that’s proposed for the UK. Fairly certain that none of the studies have ever concluded that plain packaging reduces smoking so it’s all a bit of a waste of time.

Obviously its aimed at cigarettes but sadly cigars and pipe tobacco get tarred with the same brush.

My MP emailed me about the consultation and I replied asking what his views were. He politely replied (this is the short version) that he really didn’t have a view but was waiting for the results in the report but pointed out the dangers of children smoking etc. etc. blah blah blah. So, much as I’m sure it’s a waste of time, I did reply to him pointing out that my concerns were for cigars and pipe tobacco and children really don’t pop in to my cigars shops and say ‘Gimme a Montecristo Guv’ in fact children aren’t even allowed in my cigar shops.

I can’t help but think that our MP’s must have more important issues to debate and legislate? Illegal drugs would be a good starter as they seem to be in the news all the time. Then perhaps the homeless issue, the economy of the インターネットカジノ and no doubt many other serious issues. But what do I know?

I’m starting to put together our next Online Auction catalogues which is scheduled for February. Lots entered will be live on this Online Auction website in a few weeks’ time. Seems that everyone loves the auction of the cigars whether online or offline as we are getting tons of emails from clients asking when the next sale will be… Not long to go.

Have a smokey weekend,

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Nice to get back to routine (if my life is ever routine!) after the crazy holiday season 🙂 And clearly a lot of humidors were emptied and enjoyed, judging by the order volume over the last week. So my thanks for all the orders and keeping our shops and offices busier than ever!

I am amazed at the gain in popularity of New World cigars and our clients seem to show more interest in trying out new regions and new brands/sizes all the time.

Some of the recent releases that have been hugely popular include: 

Charatan 21^st anniversary – 21 cigars from Nicaragua at £185. A cracking short fat full flavoured cigar

Alec Bradley Mundial – One of my favourites 20 delicious premium cigars for £189.

Regius Robusto – Limited Turmeaus Edition, 10 Nicaraguan cigars for under £80 quid a box which are tremendous value

Davidoff Nicaraguan Toro – These ain’t cheap but they are a great smoke and selling like mad.

It’s great that smokers are expanding their horizons. Quality of the above brands is quite excellent and I can’t remember a complaint about blend or draw but I do get a lot of emails (thank you) from clients who are very pleased with the quality as well as the massive range we carry.

I think we must have the largest range of premium cigars in the UK. Essentially if its imported into the UK – we have it in our warehouse for rapid mail order delivery as well as comprehensive ranges in our retail cigars stores across the UK.

My partner Ron from Robert Graham was down from Scotland this week as we had to do some serious whisky sampling from our ever changing and expanding range of whisky.

We now have award winning core range including:

Hoebeg – Our best selling Islay single malt
Ailein Mor – Our best selling Highland single malt
Caerban – A delicious vatted malt

Next we have our inspired series of single cask Dancing Stag, bottled at 46%. These casks yield around 300 numbered bottles and obviously can never be repeated when sold out.

Finally we have our Treasurer Selection range of cask strength single malts

Checkout the current range on this link.

Ron and I herfed with friends Dov and Joe at the lovely Bulgari Hotel (Edward Sahakian cigar lounge) and smoked our way through quite a few Cohiba BHK 54’s followed by Partagas P2’s until well… rather late. We paired up the cigars with a bottle of 30 year old Fettercairn which worked very well indeed.

The Bulgari is a perfect herfing venue. Perfect service, great food, very comfortable – who could ask for more?

Hard week in the office for me next week as Michelle is heading to Havana and I’m starting to put together catalogue for our next online Auction in February expecting a good range of limited edition, aged and rare, reserva and gran reserva to be entered. For more details drop me an email [email protected]

Have a smokey weekend,

Peaceful puffing,

Mitchell