How best to transport one’s high-quality cigars?
If you are the Houston oilman Enrico di Portanova, you are in Monte Carlo and the year is 1981, you may choose to slip them into custom pockets sewn into the breast of your mint-green linen field jacket (as immortalised by photographer Slim Aarons, below). If you are not, then a different – but equally elegant – solution may have just presented itself.
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It takes the form of a new cigar wrap which is the product of a collaboration between two storied British luxury marques: the 235-year-old cigar merchant Hunters & Frankau and the 90-year-old leather goods manufacturer Ettinger. Both enterprises remain family-owned.
Royal seal of approval
Hunters & Frankau holds the exclusive right to distribute Havana cigars in the United Kingdom and is run by Jemma Freeman, a titan of tobacco and possibly the only woman in the world to hold such a position in the industry.
Her singularity was underscored in 2013, when she won the 2013 Habanos Man of the Year Award. (Really.) Ettinger, meanwhile, is in the hands of family scion Robert Ettinger and was among the first firms to be awarded a royal warrant by King Charles. Together, they make a powerful pairing.
A cigar wrap is nothing new, of course, but this one has been developed and refined over the course of two and a half years. Each one is crafted in Birmingham from fine Maldives leather with top-quality Italian calf sides, which have been chrome tanned, dyed and then drum rolled. The result is an object that is buttery soft to the touch.
It’s all in the detail
Open it up and you will find a slanted pocket for five or six Cuban cigars, depending on whether you select something as hefty as a Cohiba Majestuosos 1966 or as slender as a Por Larranaga Montecarlo.
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Alongside this, there is a pocket to hold a cutter and any other accoutrements, as well as a space for a humidification pouch and a slot for an AirTag. If you consider the wrap, which is priced at £795, might contain tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of rolled tobacco leaf, then keeping track of it clearly makes sense.
The masterminds behind the project say that, ‘Like Cuba’s finest Havana cigars, every product has been created with the utmost attention to detail and quality.’ Had it been around in the early Eighties, perhaps Mr di Portanova might have even reconsidered that jacket.
This feature is published in Spear’s Magazine Issue 94. Click here to subscribe
