Casa in Soho is where it all started... or at least where my cigar passion started to get real. Right next to Floridita in Wardour Street, at the first London's Casa del Habano. After the smoking ban in the UK, the shop didn't keep the franchise as the area dedicated to cigar smoking is relatively small and I understand there are some sort of minimum size requirements to comply with the franchising... In any event, even if now only "Casa", this remains one of my favorite places to sample cigars in London...
So I couldn't avoid having a stop by Casa to celebrate my birthday... and what is better than a classic Montecristo A!
As you can see from the picture, this is not a cigar to be enjoyed in a short timeframe... it measures 23.5cm in length with a 47 ring gage and I enjoyed the smoke for over 2 hours... First released in 1971, it remains one of the most time consuming cigars to this day. It even made it to the Guinness Book of World Records because of its size!
This cigar is not the strongest Montecristo, it exhibits vanilla and spicy flavours all around building out in strengths - it's a great cigar I think as you don't need necessarily need to be a cigar aficionado to fully appreciate it, though most people get scared by its size (and the time required to fully smoke it, admittedly you may not always have 2+ hours for a smoke!)
These pictures give you an overview of what the smoking area of Casa looks like - it has a nice home feeling, with large black leather sofa-chairs and wood shelfs on one side and a big picture of the Cuban island on the other side. What you cannot see is the walk-in humidour, where I also keep a box with some of my precious cigars...
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