AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 CIGARS – The Travels of an Epicure

[El Presidente]

https://www.nick-hammond.com/

 

Nick is a great cigar writer and mate of mine who has just published a new cigar book. I read the pre-release yesterday.....it is a rollicking ride 

At 20 pounds, pre-order your signed copy and read it over the christmas break!

 

I will be catching up with Nick in London come September. I am planning to do a little vid interview with him. 

 

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 CIGARS – The Travels of an Epicure

 

Award-winning lifestyle writer NICK HAMMONDtakes us on a quarter-century journey across the planet, from the sun-scorched plains of Africa to the teeming rainforests of Borneo; from whisky tasting in the Japanese Alps to diving with Great White Sharks off Gaansbai.

 

Part picture postcard from a lifetime of roving reporting, part homage to a handrolled masterpiece, this luxurious, journal-style hardback book recounts a series of extraordinary tales – each one linked through the years by the love of a good cigar.

Around The World in 80 Cigars: The Travels of An Epicure is unlike any travelogue you’ve ever read. The colourful and evocative prose amuses, delights and educates and will enthrall both the cigar lover and the epicurious alike. It’s illustrated throughout with drawings from acclaimed artist Sam Bridge and will be published on September 12, 2019, by Red Door Publishing. Now is your chance to Pre-Order – and take advantage of an exclusive offer.

The first 100 pre-orders will receive an exclusive gift as well as your copy to celebrate the book’s launch.

if you would like to have your book signed by the author, simply leave a message, along with your Pre-Order (not forgetting to include to whom you would like the book dedicated). 

“A brilliant read and an inspiration to get out and see the world (with a cigar of course!). Each chapter is irreverent, educational and laugh out loud funny.”

 

Eddie Sahakian, Davidoff of London

 

‘A colourful description of travel in some of the world’s most testing and beautiful places.’

 

The Earl of Carnarvon, Highclere Castle.

 

PREORDER 

https://reddoor-book-shop.myshopify.com/products/around-the-world-in-80-cigars

[westg]

Spent a few hours with him in Cuba last November . Can't wait for the book.Thanks Rob .

[Habana Mike]

Looks interesting. 

[boopdeep]

Just ordered 

[ChanceSchmerr]

ordered! Can't wait!

[Habana Mike]

He is also a writer and reviewer for Cigar Journal. Great chap.

Anxious to see what the gift is if I ordered soon enough....

[inter4alia]

If the order number on my confirmation email is any indication, I'm over 1000 orders too late for the exclusive gift. Either way, looking forward to the read. 

[ha_banos]

Ordered ages ago! Hopefully got in there early enough. And am only just reading my first cigar book. So looking forward to this one soon!

[madandana]

Had a blast with him in Cuba. Great Pinky Bliders impressions. Can’t wait to read his book.

[El Presidente]

 a snippit. I finished the advance copy over the weekend. 

 

"Here, I must disagree with Freud. A cigar is always more than just a cigar. 

This Tunisian tale is one of scores I could give you from my travels over the years where a cigar has led me into - or indeed delivered me from - adventure. 

Cigars have introduced me to people that I’d never otherwise have known; taken me places I’d never otherwise have been. I’ve eaten meals, tasted wines, sampled spirits and had conversations that would have been inconceivable if it wasn’t for the involvement of the humble handrolled.  

This innocent bundle of dried leaves (no chemicals added), lovingly grown, harvested, cured, fermented, rolled and aged, has filled my life with colour, joy and intrigue. 

That cigar I smoked, way back in that Tunisian café all those years ago, was actually the very one responsible for the sowing the seeds of this book. 

It was a long, thin, elegant Davidoff No.2 – rich and smooth with a wrapper akin to baking parchment dusted with cocoa powder.

 

I’d pulled it from my travel humidor in Sousse that morning as I planned to wander through the streets of the old-town. After Moustache and I had overcome our initial misunderstanding and he had retired to his little kitchen to practice being hairy, I puffed and calmed and watched the blue smoke get chopped into layers by the wobbling fan. I told myself with a relieved chuckle that cigars had got me into plenty of scrapes over the years. And I began to tot them up. 

One by one, the list grew; and I began to see a patchwork of people and places, little red flags on a spinning globe that marked each place of travel with an homage to the puro; from the Spanish, meaning a cigar made of tobacco from just one country. 

It became apparent that much of my adult life – deliberately or not so deliberately, in a variety of intriguing ways – had been defined by the allure of this mystical stick. I investigated further, even ordering a fresh mint tea from my new best friend while I contemplated.

 

 This rich vein of stories spanned a quarter of a century, all my adult life and connected everything I’d ever done since the age of 18. And I’ve done a fair bit in that time. I’ve trained as a news reporter; worked as head of Copywriting for a blue-chip bank; flown birds of prey for a living; and found peace as a lifestyle and luxury travel writer, meeting new people and seeing new places, from Africa to Asia, through the cigar fields of Nicaragua to the bamboo forests of Japan, from Flanders to the Hebrides and beyond. 

These days I spend a considerable part of my working life writing about cigars, too, for magazines across the globe. And I get to combine my love of travel and new people and places with a love for these handcrafted marvels. 

I realised that over the years, I had found myself in more than enough cigar-related scrapes to fill a book. 

“So why don’t you write one then?” I asked myself out loud, risking the furry brow of Moustache wriggling in my direction as I did so.

 And why not indeed? I’d learned a lot about cigars and their production by now; had dug out the finest shops in dozens of countries and was on various tasting panels refining my palate to the stage where I could discern and differentiate flavours and nuances that regionally-grown tobaccos produce. 

My various assignments had given me a vast scope of reference. I’d met and chatted to dozens of the world’s best cigar makers and enjoyed their creations in some of the most luxurious and awe-inspiring locations on the planet.

 

So dammit, I would write the book. And this travelogue was born – a travelogue unlike any you’ve ever read, I’m sure of that. Whether you like cigars or not shouldn’t make a jot of difference to your enjoyment of it, I hope. I write for dozens of magazines and companies about everything from fishing to men’s tailoring, great food and wine and artisanal craftsmen.

 

But if you like the occasional whiff of a well-made smoke, then settle down to enjoy yourself. You will understand how the cigar finds a place in all the proceeding stories. It binds them, much as it does in my memory, as I cast back and remember each one. It’s easier for me to remember the specifics of each occasion when I remember the cigar moment that punctuated it; suddenly I can recall the colours, the sounds, the smells. The cigar is a flag in the sand, a moment recorded in time.

 

Once you’re a cigar person you’re a member of the gang; a Brother or Sister of the Leaf. You’ll have a friend wherever you find a fellow cigar smoker and what’s more, you’ll have a friend wherever you find a cigar store or lounge. Wherever you go and whatever you do, there’ll be a little cigar-shaped place in your brain that is never fully asleep.

 

There is a great egalitarian sense of cigar bonhomie – which doesn’t exclude ladies, by the way, who are equally welcome – which, until you’ve experienced it, can’t be adequately described.

 Cigar people are the best. 

Thanks for joining me, Dear Reader, in this sultry alleyway café in Sousse - with sugared mint and the cocoa-like No.2 lingering on our palate. Moustache is clanking away in the kitchen and singing a mournful dirge; the cat still sprawls drunkenly nearby.

 I ask you to close your eyes; let the hubbub of the souk and the lugubrious swish of the overhead fan fade from your ears. Like an eddy of cigar smoke, we are shape shifting; to another time and another destination…"