I have actually lost count of how many Partagas Festivals I have attended in Havana but I reckon this may well be my thirteenth. It’s rather confusing as I can’t seem to get a definitive answer whether this Festival was the 14^th,16^th or 21^st depending on how you count them (!)

So after relaxing with a facial and massage at the Virgin Upper class lounge in Gatwick to prepare me for 10 ½ hours of no smoking I settled into my flat bed for my 57^th trip to Havana !

The usual Partagas Short at Jose Marti ( smoking ban of course not particularly policed) and we headed straight over to the Melia Habana for a bit of a herf to get us in the Havana Festival mood 🙂 bought a box of Partagas E2’s ( which hardly lasted for the 4 days) and sipped a few HC7’s

My smoking chums and I  spent a long day  enjoying fabulous sunny and hot weather visiting the Indian Caves, Robaina’s Finca ( where the seedlings had just been planted) Pinar del Rio and beautiful Vinales  which always looks like a postcard to me.

Herfed our way through a baggie of assorted smokes including E2’s,D5’s as well as Punch Serie D’Oro no.1 that my friend Zaffie had brought from London ( talk about bringing coals to Newcastle!) dinner at Prado Neptuno and smokes on the Terrace of the Nacional whilst listening to some good if not incredibly loud music ( maybe I am getting old but my friend Valerio assured me there are only too volumes in Cuba ‘ too loud’ and extremely loud’ !)

Someone emailed me to say that one side of the Nacional Terrace was now ‘no smoking’ but I couldn’t see anyone without a cigar in their hand !

Herfed at Partagas VIP and caught up with a friends from all over the world as ever and bought some cracking Partagas books with robustos and piramides- v. cool. Smoked a few at Palacio too before doing a bit of a walking tour round old Havana including the rum factory, La Bodegita del Medio,Floridita,Villa Nueva, Camra  Oscura and  a great ice cream shop where I introduced my friends to the pleasures of smoking a good Havana whilst eating vanilla ice cream !

This was possibly the best Partagas Festival I have ever attended as the venue for the gala dinner was at the incredible ‘Tropicana’ which beats any and every show I have seen in the world ( and I have seen quite a few!) Great bunch of friend at our table including Amir and Tim from Canada who I meet up with at every Festival, Rob Fox from JJ, Zaffie and Arturo and cigar journalist Nick Hammond. We were treated to cigar after cigar throughout the evening together with copious amounts of wine and rum-finishing off with a bottle of HC7, very nice!

I bumped in to Colin Ganley from European Cigar Journal who gave me a new cigar book called ‘Le Snob’ which was a nice surprise as there’s a short chapter that I wrote for it with a nice photo of me ( no idea when that happened!)

Massimo from Italy ( no moustache this year!) conducted the auction in his inimitable style and was very successful in raising some 38,000 C.U.C. for charity- well done Massimo.

‘Amigo’s de Partagas’ were presented with fabulous boxes of special size and specially banded cigars and I will proudly display mine in my London humidor. The show followed the dinner and was as breath taking as ever. I’ll try and wham some movie clips on to our Facebook page in the next day or two

Herfed a few in the lounge at Jose Marti airport before the flight back home to finish a memorable Festival trip and my last overseas trip of the year. I think I have spent 6 months out of the UK this year so it’s good to be back at the office…..if only till the February’s Festival del Habanos

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell
 

Another week of herfing finishing with a very late night at the Lanesborough with friends and I sampling the latest Orchant Seleccion Havana cigars which I can confirm are quote splendid 🙂 in fact I’m smoking one now.

Loaded with full flavour and crafted beautifully with a perfectly even burn. Golden colorado maduro wrapper, smooth and sweet from first to last puff.

Cabinets of 25       Singles

… only available at C.GARS Ltd of course. Limited edition that won’t ever be repeated.

Our pre auction cigar evening  on the 27th at the lovely Ten Manchester street Hotel is already sold out- no surprises there 🙂 and it should be an excellent night of sampling  the best UK regional edition cigars with some champagne and canapés

Brian Ebbesen, our Director of auctions has been at the office most of the week Lotting up all of the cigars for the November 28th auction and the PDF catalogue is finally online  it’s a great feature as you can read the catalogue on PDF and click through to the Lots online for bidding. Very cool technology.

After a zillion delays with design and building work it looks like we may yet get our new Turmeaus cigar shop in Mayfair open by the end of this month.

It’s located in Shepherd Market and is the usual small and cool type of cigar shop that we love.

The shop has a great walk in humidor and will stock the complete range of Havana cigars as well Fuente and Davidoff cigars by the stick and by the box.

We will sell a select range of the finest humidors, by Daniel Marshall  and Elie Bleu and lighters from DuPont,   Dunhill, and Givenchy to name a few. We will have a sampling room in the lower ground floor together with a bank of client lockers.

And best of all our clients in Town can also take advantage of our internet prices and order online for collection instore.

Next blog will be coming to you from Havana as I’m heading over next week for the Partagas Festival and hopefully a little sunshine 🙂

Have a smokey weekend

Peaceful puffing 

Mitchell

Yes it’s true, the months have flown since our rather outrageous Summer auction and the date is fast approaching for our winter auction which I believe has more auction Lots than ever before!  

Here are the main details: 

Auction catalogue with 400 Lots is now online : http://www.cigarauctions.co.uk

 Auction Lots are now available for inspection by appointment at our London offices. We are also holding an open day on Sunday 27th November from 1 pm.

Important links:

Click here for Bidder registration   

Click here for hard copy catalogue available  

Sunday 27th November pre auction event at Ten Manchester street. Click here for details and tickets available here  

Monday 28th November auction event together with Sunday 27th November pre auction event. Click here for details and tickets here  

Please reserve your places early as we have limited availability and will be operating a guest list

If you are unable to attend the event, we are more than happy to provide specific Lot condition and appearance reports.  Simply email us the Lot numbers [email protected]

We’re planning on some fine English Market Selection Havana herfing on the 27th and 28^th including:

Juan Lopez Seleccion no.2 ‘ Orchant Seleccion’ 

El Rey del Mundo Choix de L’Epoque La Flor de Cano Short Robustos  

Por Larranaga Regalias de Londres…   should be a good start 🙂

We’re still hopeful that the new Upmann will be released in the UK this month and we may even see small quantity of the Montecristo No.2 Gran Reserva although I gather it will be out in more reasonable volume early next year. No firm date as yet for the 2011 UK regional but we are ever hopeful (!)

Christmas season is her! Great gift selections on this linkNext week I’m heading off to the sunshine of Havana for the Partagas Festival, always a great event and a good chance to catch up with old friends as well as make new friends, all who appreciate the brand of Partagas. I’ll be staying at the Hotel Nacional as always and herfing nightly on the terrace, visiting 1 or 2 factories as well as Pinar del Rio.

Off to the Lanesborough for a herf this evening with friends 🙂

Have a smokey week 

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Another exciting month end with my home office pc giving up the ghost after only 2 years faithful service, seems that computer equipment is more consumable than ever now. That said 24 hours burning day and night with smoke coming off  and ash falling on my keyboard whilst dealing with up to 2000 emails a day and I reckon I probably got my money’s worth. I was smoking a Flor de Cano Short Robusto whilst remembering that the first primitive PC I bought worked on dial up, was as slow as hell, continually crashed and cost me around £3,500 which was an awful lot of money back in the day – especially as I had no money!

I remember telling Laura that I truly believed that technology/ speed would continually double and prices would halve until every home in the country would have a computer, and I remember us cracking open a bottle of Dom Perignon when we went on broadband and downloaded our 4th version of the C.Gars website which had loads of new features and zillions of photographs… and sales doubled that year 🙂

Occasionally I look at the old versions of the C.Gars websites on waybacktimemachine and laugh at how primitive they were and how my daughter could probably do a better design but back in the day this was cutting edge!

So the replacement pc is installed, no data has been lost and life returns to normal after two evenings work on my laptop (still super fast and working thankfully) I’m often asked how do you manage so many emails, you must work 24 hours a day? Well some days it feels like I’m working 24 hours a day but I actually only work afternoons in the London office and late evenings at home so it may well be thanks to the Sales Teams that you get rapid replies to email. Well done Sales Team 🙂

I love working at the office but it has to be said that it’s a bit of a madhouse with 7 or 8  girls all talking (at once usually as well as very loud), phones ringing, doorbells buzzing, computers binging and bonging – not the easiest of  environments for a quiet cigar moment! Whereas smoking at home is an entirely different experience, quiet and relaxing. Some time for contemplation and the complete experience that only a good Havana cigar can do. 

I have been smoking the new Partagas SD5 since the day it came out and have been really impressed with it. I wasn’t sure if it’s my taste changing or I just seem to enjoy Partagas more and more these days. I decided to take 3 Partagas D5’s from 3 separate boxes home with me for a serious taste and quality test and I have to say that its so far my favourite smoke of the year, perhaps with the exception of the UK LFDC which is an entirely different animal, I really rate this first production batch of D5’s. They are smooth and full flavoured, well crafted, attractive wrappers and complex. Shorter than a D4 – yes. More satisfying smoke though and more going on with the blend than the D4 for sure. I can only hope that subsequent production batches maintain blend integrity.

True story – chap comes into my office last week, has a drink and a smoke with me and tells me that he buys his accessories and some of his cigars from me (has done for years) but gets most of his boxes from ‘ Don Nobody’ from overseas as they are 25% cheaper but he just wasn’t certain if all the cigars were genuine and what did I think. I have heard a few similar stories over the years and my thoughts were:

 -why would you want to buy from ‘Don Nobody’ who is not a cigar specialist just someone selling a product that happens to be cigars, could be bricks or soap bars. Surely one of the joys of Havana cigars is the experience of dealing with a genuine cigar specialist who is able to advise on what’s new? What’s good/bad/indifferent? What are the best factory codes? Best date codes? Suitable wrapper colours and correct storage conditions  – that’s all part of the experience that you are only ever likely to get when you deal with a real ‘specialist’

-To save 25% on the cost of our cigars but not be certain whether you are smoking the real deal or a fake seems to be a bit of a false economy to me to say the least

-Not clever risking shipping tobacco into the UK  as UK customs may well stop the package and I understand you may well end up in front of a magistrate….for the saving you may make on some questionable cigars it hardly seems worth the bother surely

-the bottom line I think is that you get what you pay for and there are no free lunches as such. Better to smoke less but smoke the best

OK so I‘m kicking back for the weekend with D5’s and E2’s don’t even ask for boxes of 25’s ! long sold out and could be weeks before we get some more but we do have the boxes of 5’s available which are cool presentation.

Getting ready for auction season which starts this week with the first 400 Lots going online and our catalogues being sent out this Wednesday. Tickets for the auction events will be online on Monday evening but places as always will be strictly limited. Featured cigars at the 27th November pre herf and pre and post auction herf on the 28th November include the latest ‘Orchant Seleccion’ release of Juan Lopez Seleccion No.2 as well as the fabulous UK regional LFDC Short robustos all matched up with copious quantities of champagne/cocktails and canapés…. October was a great month but November will be wild !…feels like Christmas season has started 🙂

Have a smokey weekend 

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Just back from a sunny week in New York City where I was herfing round the clock at some of the best cigar lounges with some of my favourite friends 🙂

Morning smokes were usually Davidoff at De La Concha with the window on 6^th Avenue it’s the perfect spot to watch the world go by

Evening smokes usually at Grand Havana Room ( membership required ) or Club Macanudo ( no membership required) both places had the best of service and ambience and it was good to catch up with many friends over the week, and herf my way through countless Fuente, Davidoff and Oliva cigars to name a few.

Also popped into the fabulous Nat Sherman store to have a smoke or two or three with Michael Herklots. It was great to see some of the old Nat Sherman pre embargo Havanas specially made for them. Could well be one of the finest cigar stores in the world and I’m always made to feel very welcome there. ( TY NS!)

It’s always good to get back to London though… and my walk in humidor crammed floor to ceiling with Havanas! I delved straight into a Partagas SD no.5 followed by the new E2 which is fast becoming a favourite. The boxes of 5 are very cool.

Auction catalogue is about to be sent to the printers, we expect to post them out to clients next week. Although all 400 Lots will be online in the next few days and browsing as well as bidding is all clear and easy to do on the website. 

Looks like the press coverage has already got started 🙂 we’ll keep adding it to the media centre here 

More Cohiba 1966 expected to arrive any day now and we still have some decent stocks of the other 2011 limited editions : Ramon Allones- Allones Extra and Hoyo Short piramides.

Countdown to the Partagas festival in Havana in November- actually can’t believe how fast this year is flying by, 4 and a ½ weeks till the cigars auction and 8 weeks till Christmas!

Have a great week

Peaceful puffing

Mitchell

Grand Havana Room