📩 The Luxury of Attention

In Todays Letter...

• Tuesday Evening

• • Behind The Cigar

  • Behind the Venue

Dear Cigar Lovers,

Tuesday evening. A Trinidad Coloniales, an outdoor table at The Landmark, and one small task ahead of me: opening the Cigar Letters Group.

The Landmark itself is beautiful, though its outdoor smoking terrace has one rather significant flaw: it looks directly onto Marylebone Road. Six lanes of London traffic are not ordinarily conducive to contemplation.

Nevertheless, after taking a seat, opening up the group and getting the matches ready, I was as content as could be.

Shortly after, realising my phone was on the brink of death, I surrendered it to the concierge to charge.

Now, it was just me and the Trinidad Coloniales staring at each other, no distractions.

The Coloniales is elegant and delicate, despite the weight of its name. Medium-bodied and around half an hour in length, it asks very little of the evening. Expect roasted wood and cortado-like notes, carried in a soft, generous haze of smoke.

The first exhale set the pace. It was one of relief. And to think I still had the entire cigar to enjoy. Three draws in, I was already satisfied. Had it ended there, I could hardly have complained. And yet almost the entire cigar still remained.

We spend so much time trying to add things to an experience when sometimes removing something is what improves it.

Music. Messages. Emails. Notifications.

Gone.

For half an hour, there was nothing left to do but smoke the cigar.

Perhaps our undivided attention is one of the simplest luxuries we still have.

The trick is not only to find moments worthy of it, but to create the time and space to experience those moments.

Behind The Cigar

Trinidad began in 1969 and spent years largely reserved as a diplomatic gift before becoming commercially available in 1998. The Coloniales joined the range in 2003: a slender 44-ring-gauge cigar, made with long-filler tobacco from Cuba’s Vuelta Abajo region.

Behind the Venue

The Landmark opened beside Marylebone Station in 1899 as the Great Central Hotel, one of London’s great railway hotels. Its extraordinary central courtyard was originally designed so guests could arrive directly inside by horse and carriage; today it survives as the glass-roofed Winter Garden at the heart of the hotel.

Forward this to a fellow cigar lover, they may appreciate it.

Until next time.

Yours truly,
The Cigar Lover

Cigar Letters
^{No. 30}