Hi, I'm Mike Choi, and I'd like to welcome you to Boutique Smokes, the UK centre for boutique cigar brands. I'm taking 5 years experience running the Edward Sahakian Cigar Shop and Sampling Room (one of the most exclusive cigar lounges in London, 2015 Cigar Journal Cigar Lounge of the Year, where I won the UK Habananosommelier of the Year 2013 and was the Runner-Up in the 2014 Habanosommelier World) and I've now turned my attention to New World cigars (any cigars which aren't Cuban).
Since 2013, I have been visiting Intertabac (the largest tobacco trade show in the World) and smoking around 25 New World cigars per 3 day show. Whilst this may sound like many smoker's idea of heaven, I can attest that it's much harder than you'd think and you smoke a lot of mediocre cigars to find maybe one that stands out. To put it simply, I've kissed a lot of frogs to find the true princes of the New World Cigar market.
What I set out to create with Boutique Smokes, is a personally curated selection of new boutique brands to the UK cigar smoker, that I put my reputation behind as a Champion Habanosommelier and hope you enjoy smoking them as much as I did. Not only do I think they are stand out brands but, more importantly I respect the people behind them.
