Kensington, London is home to grand terraces, royal palaces, world-class museums and Imperial College London.

It is also home to The Roof Gardens, a private members’ club with a small selection of cigars that stays open into the early hours.

Tucked among the greenery is a Spanish Garden, complete with fountains, tiled paths and comfortable seating.

For a moment, London disappears.

I started the evening with a Punch Coronations.

Small, thin, Cuban.

The kind of cigar that does not dominate the evening, but gets things moving slowly.

The Punch Coronations has an effortless draw, medium-bodied with notes of nuts and leather. It allows you to really settle into your chair.

A few draws, an Old Fashioned, conversations beginning to settle.

As the evening developed and the Punch was no longer, I felt it was time for a second cigar.

I have always admired the way the Drew Estate Flying Pig cigars smoke. Less so for the flavour, more so for the manner in which the draw feels full and the smoke is dense and cohesive.

I noticed the Drew Estate Undercrown Maduro Flying Pig on the menu and did not hesitate.

The Liga Privada Flying Pig remains my preference but this Maduro Flying Pig was no disappointment. Short, dark and wonderfully excessive.

Thick in the hand and effortless to smoke, it delivers exactly what its appearance promises: a full, indulgent experience.

From a restrained Cuban Punch to an American Flying Pig.

Quite the progression.

There was something satisfying about smoking these cigars at The Roof Gardens in Kensington.

Spain brought tobacco from the Americas to Europe centuries ago.

Now I was sitting in a Spanish garden in London, the city I call home, smoking first a Cuban cigar and then one from an American brand.

I shared the evening with our growing Cigar Letters Members Group.

Replies began appearing from readers in different countries, each with their own cigar and their own evening unfolding. Fernando and Kyle kindly shared their recommendations and recent experiences.

For a moment, the whole thing felt neatly connected.

Spain.

Cuba.

America.

London.

Different cultures, different people, connected by the same ritual.

We tend to think of cigars as belonging to places.

Cuba. Nicaragua. Honduras. The Dominican Republic.

But perhaps their real appeal is how easily they cross borders.

A cigar can be grown in one country, rolled in another, smoked in a third and discussed with someone thousands of miles away.

They travel remarkably well.

Not merely in boxes, but between people.

By the time the Flying Pig was nearing its end, the glasses were emptying and Kensington was waiting below.

For a little while, though, we had been somewhere else.

Sometimes elsewhere is only a cigar away.

In the mid-1990s, law student Jonathan Drew and his fraternity brother Marvin Samel opened a tiny 16-square-foot cigar kiosk inside New York’s World Trade Center.

They went from selling other people’s cigars to producing their own, before Drew moved to Estelí, Nicaragua in 1998 and began building what would become one of America’s most recognisable cigar houses.

The brand built its reputation by doing things differently - bold blends, unconventional shapes and a distinctly modern approach to cigar making.

The Flying Pig is perhaps the clearest expression of that character: short, thick, slightly absurd in appearance, and impossible to mistake for anything else.

From a kiosk in Manhattan to a Flying Pig in a Spanish garden in London, Quite the journey.

Until next time.

Yours truly,
The Cigar Lover

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Cigar Letters
^{No. 31}