Seleccion Orchant Ramon 898

Those jolly nice people at Hunters and Frankau, the exclusive importers of Havanas to the UK market (English Market Selection) have kindly allowed me to select 16 cabinets of the splendid Ramon Allones 898’s (now a discontinued cigar) to continue my range of the best of the best “Orchant Seleccion” double gold banded cigar range.

 


 

Each cabinet has been signed and individually numbered and I don’t need to tell you what an exquisite smoke this cigar is. Matured to perfection from 2002, full flavoured, complex and well balanced, these first rate Havanas were a major success with my clients.

 


 

Register with us for the next exclusive “seleccion Orchant” release” [email protected]

 

Peaceful puffing

 

Mitchell

 

Plugs :-(

 

A lot of talk on the internet about “plugged ” cigars recently

 

Plugs? very very rare indeed. Yes, they do happen from time to time but the vast majority of construction flaws are “twists” that constrict the air/smoke package. As frustrating as a plug is …. I reckon that 9 out of 10 cigars that have a twist construction flaw can be cut in half and both halves are then perfectly smokeable. Not ideal …agreed, but at least not a dead loss.

 

Construction flaws were more common as we all know 98-01 but quality control since then has seriously improved. I can remember in earlier years getting daily complaints about construction but we now rarely get complaints about construction. Better roller training and more draw testing in Cuba has certainly paid off.

 

Best tip: avoid 98-02 as far better cigars were made in later vintages. Filler tobacco is already aged in most Havanas from the last few years so why try and find a 6-10 year old box that may be problematical when a 1/2/3 year old box is likely to be a far better smoke in all respects…. construction, blending and even wrappers.

 

Food for thought

 

Peaceful plugless puffing šŸ™‚

 

Best

 

SmokeyMo

Airports bloody airports!

Having been overseas for a month I thought I should do a few trips round my retail empire:-) over the last few days.
 
First stop was my Hamburg cigar store…..Heathrow airport Terminal 2 was fabulous…it was so quiet I thought it must be closed seriously there was no one around and no queues anywhere. Security were great….I didn’t have to take my laptop out of my case,didn’t have to take my belt or shoes off and just zipped through security in seconds.
 
Zoomed up to my Chester cigar store  by good old Virgin first class train where I counted being offered tea 30 times in 2 hours 20 minutes….bravo Richard Branson although he needs to sort out the taste of that Virgin Cola as it tastes fairly awful!
 
Yesterday I popped up to Glasgow and Edinburgh from Luton airport where I was more or less strip searched! laptop out,belt off,shoes off….and I still beeped going through the metal detector…go figure. You have been warned!
 
I was ready for a smoke by the time I got to Glasgow and luckily the weather was great so I enjoyed a Monte 2 with Bobby from Hunters and Frankau and Fraser from Robert Graham Ltd outside my Glasgow cigar and whisky store.



 
Back to the luxury of my London office where I am finally adjusting back to UK time ( I kept waking up at 3 a.m needing to smoke a Partagas!) and I’m now testing out the Hoyo Epicure especial and H Upmann magnum 50 which have so far proved to be extremely popular with my clients. Oh and I see Partagas SD4’s now come in boxes of 10…great idea.
 
OK…I better pretend to be doing some work I guess before Michelle and Laura notice….that I’m not šŸ™‚
 
Peaceful puffing
 
Mitchell

Recession?…really? …you sure?…well maybe!

I’m sitting here on my balcony in sunny Miami overlooking the water as the sun goes down, smoking a Partagas P2 and sipping some HC15.

 

I get the English newspapers every day out here and read the doom and gloom about the economy. I watch the news on Cable and it’s mostly economical doom and gloom but how accurate is all of this doom and gloom reporting?

 

I’m not sure but then I know little about politics and economics as I am only a simple cigar merchant. What I do know is what I see with my own two eyes. So lets start with the West End of London 2 weeks ago before I left for the US. The roads from my office in North London all the way to St James’s were packed. This was not due to roadwork’s but was in fact sheer weight of traffic.

 

The amount of “Supercars” that I counted was literally staggering. Porsche and Bentley were common as muck, Mercs and Ferraris plentiful……and the stores were jam packed with shoppers. The pavements ( sidewalks) were jammed with shoppers. The restaurants crowded.

 

Maybe London is a bit more isolated or insulated or maybe we are maxing out our credit cards but I couldn’t see any sign of recession. Sure the price of petrol is up at Ā£1.20 a litre and the property market going nowhere but I do wonder about what I read in the newspapers

 

Fast forward a few days and I’m in Las Vegas…and now in Miami. You guessed it, lovely cars in plentiful quantity, crowded shops and restaurants along Deco Drive, Shopping Malls…packed. Plenty of lovely cigars shops and all have plenty of customers…..gas is apparently “expensive” at 4 Bucks a gallon and the property markets in the crapper.

 

So my American friends complain about $4 a gallon gas whilst we pay nearer to $10 a gallon…go figure.

 

Meantime what of the cigar business? Well it could truly be recession proof as all of our trading divisions (retail, mail order, international, aged&rare, humidors) are reporting an increase in sales so far in 2008. Interesting….maybe my clients are “addicted” to cigars. Nope, that’s not it as cigars aren’t addictive in the way we recognize a tobacco product like cigarettes for example.

 

Perhaps we are staying at home more during these recessionary times and spoiling our selves with more good food, drink and cigars. Quite possible as my specialist whisky shops in Scotland also report an increase in trade this year.

 

I’m just not sure that we should believe all we read in the papers.

 

I’m back in London in August and planning a series of monthly Tuesday evening  (complimentary) cigar tasting dinners at Boisdales. If you would like to be put on the guest list drop me an email [email protected] should be good fun and I’ll probably invite some industry personalities along as well….and we can all discuss “recession” over a good cigar and drink!

 

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Have to get back to the sunshine and my P2 šŸ™‚

 

Peaceful puffing

 

 

Mitchell