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

This week is a serious week for herfing that started with a splendid cigar dinner at cigar friendly Harts Hotel in Nottingham the dinner was held in a Bedouin Tent and thankfully it was a dry and mild evening.

We enjoyed Rafael Gonzales Petit Coronas, H Upmann Connoisseur no.1 and Partagas Serie D Especial Edicion Limitada.

All three smokes were first rate and chosen by Simon Chase who talked about these cigars over the course of the evening. The post dinner cigars were Cohiba BHK 54’s, needless to say they were magnificent. Many thanks to Ashwan for the kind invitation and the Harts Hotel for a wonderful event and Simon Chase of course.

Yesterday was my birthday and I was not planning to head into the office but I had a call from my good friend and top basketball star Mark Blount who had zipped over to London for a few days so … it was office herf time for a long afternoon of Punch Serie D’Oro no.1’s and Cohiba BHK’s matched up with Vigia 18 year old Cuban rum (quite a lot of it !) Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill champagne and another few smokes in the evening completed the perfect day

So I decided it was probably best not to drive home and surprise surprise my car was given a parking ticket despite having a residents permit clearly displayed! How stupid or evil are these parking wardens? don’t even answer. Of course the ticket is now being cancelled. Talk about a waste of time.

Tonight I am heading to The Lamb at Hinden a delightful Hotel in Wiltshire owned by our friends Boisdale. It looks delightful and I’ll be taking my Co – Director Karyn with me for the evening 🙂

Tomorrow its smokes, dinner and more smokes at Boisdale in Belgravia who are so busy that they have only just managed to squish in my booking!

Monday I am off to our beautiful La Casa del Habano in Hamburg for the day and looking forward to some great regional edition smokes with my partner Christoph

Happy days!

Peaceful puffing:-)

Mitchell

The annual dinner and awards for the Association of Independent Cigar Specialists (AICS) were held at Boisdale in Belgravia last night and a great evening was had by all especially as we were enjoying UK exclusive regional edition Punch Serie D’Oro No.1 which are just incredible smokes. In fact the more the mature the better they become.

As I am Chairman of the AICS it was my pleasure to hand out the annual awards which included two for my staff in Chester (Fiona – long service to industry award) and Liverpool (Christine – Customer Service Award) so they received a beautiful certificate as well as a bundle of shopping vouchers which put a very large smile on their faces 🙂

The Cigar Specialist award went to Eddie Sahakian of Davidoff and the Supplier award went to Gift International – well done chaps ! Thanks to Boisdale for a fabulous evening…. as ever

Finally after a long wait we have completed on our new London warehouse acquisition and the builders are starting in the next few days so we are doubling our capacity for mail order fulfilment and hope to offer an even larger range and faster service (is that possible ?!!) this will be a state of the art fulfilment centre and my Team are all very excited about it.

Still a few more months of 2010 to go and lots more expansion plans yet!

If I forgot to wish a Happy Ramadan recently – my apologies and hopefully this is just in time before it ends! and a Shana Tova/Happy new year too 🙂

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell