Alfred Dunhill, 30 Duke Street inside the maturing room!

[99call]

I've never been able to find any images prior to today.   Found this from an old catalogue. Inside the belly of the beast,  Dunhills 30 Duke Street maturing room. Mesmerising to affectively see a corridor of full 10,000 grand cabinets, one after another, after another............ this was affectively Tutankhamun Tomb of cigars.........the holiest of holies

"After the big raid of the 17th of April 1941, Churchill had been woken by a phone call at 4am to be informed that his cigars (stored in the Dunhill humidor), had survived the destruction"

It's very black humour, but I would have been first on the scene, volunteering to help dig out and look for 'survivors'

[99call]

Golden days

[MrBirdman]

Love it, thanks for sharing with us. 

[99call]

7 minutes ago, MrBirdman said:

Love it, thanks for sharing with us. 

my pleasure... it just blows my mind that both the London store and the store in New York are sadly lost and gone forever.....what a travesty 

[MPS]

Incredible images thank you! Dunhill will always be an iconic brand.


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[Wookie]

we had a nice Dunhill shop in Boston in the 1990s.  Lovely place, but the cigars were pretty bad. I think the transition from cuban to NC was tough on Dunhill and Davidoff. Kelner solved the problem for Davidoff.  I don't think Dunhill ever "figured" it out.

[El Presidente]

Beautiful 

[MrBirdman]

2 hours ago, 99call said:

my pleasure... it just blows my mind that both the London store and the store in New York are sadly lost and gone forever.....what a travesty 

True, though we can at least give thanks there remain retailers like Fox and Davidoff in London to carry on the tradition of Havana cigars. And IIRC Fox sold many a cigar to Sir Winston, though we'd have to get @Ryan's word on whether he stored cigars there too. 

[Jack]

6 hours ago, 99call said:

Golden days

Ah, the true "cabinet" cigars!

[WLC]

Can you imagine the aroma? Intoxicating I'm sure.

[Puros Y Vino]

Wow. Those monster cabinets are stunning. Surely some have survived the years? I'd hate to think that they're all gone. 

[MrBirdman]

1 hour ago, Puros Y Vino said:

Wow. Those monster cabinets are stunning.

According to Simon Chase, Dunhill sold at least one cabinet containing 30,000 cigars. I don’t know if Dunhill sold to retailers for resale, if not I’d love to know who bought that. 

If it somehow survived and made it to BR I think it’d probably break the internet 🙃

[99call]

5 hours ago, Puros Y Vino said:

Surely some have survived the years? I'd hate to think that they're all gone. 

So far, for those that have sold in UK auctions (10,000 count cabinets) I've seen a Por Larranaga, Partagas,  La Corona, Punch, and a Hoyo.   I cant recall where but i'm sure i've seen an image (quite recently) of a UK royal household property, it was a tasting event, and behind the people in the image, seemed to be a collection of mega cabinets, but all facing the wrong way..........I'll try and find it

[Edicion]

Lovely piece of history.

There was someone else recently asking a similar question to the following:

In those days, how did they control humidity and temperature (pre-AC) and month long wintery days (below freezing could happen?) and did it have any effect on the cigars? 

Any info welcome. 

[Bijan]

54 minutes ago, Edicion said:

In those days, how did they control humidity and temperature (pre-AC) and month long wintery days (below freezing could happen?) and did it have any effect on the cigars?

This is London so keeping stuff cool is probably not a problem, especially if it's underground.

Keeping things warm has not been a problem since the invention of fire

Adding and removing humidity was probably more work than it is now, but definitely something needed for a lot of other goods and industrial processes, and definitely worth doing when dealing with what looks like a million cigars.

What probably has changed a lot is how people did humidity control in humidors at home. Reading Zino Davidoff's short book on it, it seems people kept some cigars in a humidor humidifed on hand for smoking, but long term storage for the bulk of a person's stash of cigars was not very well regulated for humdity, and would be put in humidor to get ready for smoking.

[99call]

43 minutes ago, Edicion said:

Lovely piece of history.

There was someone else recently asking a similar question to the following:

In those days, how did they control humidity and temperature (pre-AC) and month long wintery days (below freezing could happen?) and did it have any effect on the cigars? 

Any info welcome. 

If you take a closer look at this image, you will see a very futuristic looking AC system on the ceiling.     In the UK the only blessing we have weather wise, is that A, it's pretty damp, and B, the natural temp in a house will sit around the sweet spot anyway, so you cant go too far wrong anyway. 

Cigars in a keep like this would have been kept for decades, I think we all like to imagine creating micro climates and RH control is something thats only been mastered fairly recently.  but I think the manager and staff of a store like this would have developed an intuition where the heating needed to be,  it also looks like they'v cedar lined the roof and walls, Marble floor in a basement,  I think they would have been set sweet. 

 

[Bijan]

Just a follow up on this, here are the relevant pages from the book. Referring to cigars, "sleeping", not quite ready to smoke, due to the difficulty of maintaining humdity and temperature for the whole collection.

Edit: First page also mentions "maturing rooms" in England, which would be kept at constant humidity/temperature.

 

[99call]

Just found another image of Dunhill Duke Maturing Rooms.   Sadly no better resolution available.  The leftmost cabinet, looks like an absolute monster, and you can just about make out, what looks like the classic 'dunhill'  logo in gilt lettering on the head of the cabinet. 

What a crappy chair!!

[99call]

Wow........so happy to finally located more on this Historical Mecca

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NSXCIGAR]

Can't imagine what they would have considered "rare cigars" in those days...

[BrightonCorgi]

They're promoting 72% RH; interesting.

Boston's "olde" Dunhill store kept cigars on the humid side too, but I think it was officially 70%.  One could see the humidity rolling down the glass wall into the walk-in.

[99call]

31 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

They're promoting 72% RH; interesting

I think if someone is expressing a range between 67 and 72,  it would be blurring the lines to say that's promoting 72%.  also  @Bijan is quoting from "The Connoiseur's book of cigars" recommendations,   not what Dunhill was practicing. 

Although obviously if you said that it seemed to be running wet in the Boston store, I would 100% take your word for it

[BrightonCorgi]

46 minutes ago, 99call said:

Although obviously if you said that it seemed to be running wet in the Boston store, I would 100% take your word for it

One thing the store did that I continue today is if you are planning an event with cigars; pre-cut the cigars.  If it's just a couple of friends over, I pass the box around and let you pick your own.  If it's more than that, cutting ahead makes it easier. 

Dunhill would also offer free drinks while shopping, along with smoking a cigar purchased in store.

[NSXCIGAR]

14 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

They're promoting 72% RH; interesting.

Boston's "olde" Dunhill store kept cigars on the humid side too, but I think it was officially 70%.  One could see the humidity rolling down the glass wall into the walk-in.

It just occurred to me that the low 60s rH recommendation is really a 21st century thing. I don't recall ever having any issues at higher humidity in the 90s. And of course we all had "70/70" drilled into our heads since we got in to the hobby. 

It's possible that Corojo & Criollo are a lot more forgiving or even benefitted from higher rH. We know that NCs have fewer issues at higher rH and many producers are using Corojo and Criollo for NCs. 

So it may be that 70-72% was totally accepted at the time and actually was ideal, particularly in an environment with a lot of traffic, doors opening and closing and high airflow. 

[Bijan]

1 hour ago, NSXCIGAR said:

It just occurred to me that the low 60s rH recommendation is really a 21st century thing. I don't recall ever having any issues at higher humidity in the 90s.

Yeah, those Habanos inserts in the boxes still say 65-70% and 16-18C.