There is a particular pleasure in watching a young festival find its feet. The first outing of any event is an act of faith; the second is where character sets. This year’s Summertime Smoke — the second edition of the festival now firmly stamped into the British cigar calendar — arrived with that settled confidence, and by early afternoon the lawns of EJ Churchill Shooting Ground were thick with smoke, conversation, and the easy sociability that only a shared cigar seems to produce.
Set in the folded Buckinghamshire countryside outside High Wycombe, EJ Churchill is not the obvious home for a cigar festival, and that is precisely the point. A working shooting ground rather than a hotel ballroom, it lends the day an outdoor, sporting texture — green rather than gilded, informal rather than reverent. Guests drifted between exhibitor stands and open grass, cigars in hand, in a setting that felt less like a trade fair and more like a garden party that happened to smell magnificent.
What distinguishes Summertime Smoke from a straightforward retail showcase is the mix of people it draws into one field. Enthusiasts arrived to sample and to shop, but they did so alongside the producers themselves — the men and women whose names sit on the bands — and the ambassadors who carry those brands into the market. That proximity is rare. Where else might an enthusiast find themselves lighting a fresh stick a few feet from the person who created it, and then asking, directly, why they made the choices they did?
The exhibitor list read like a survey of the modern premium landscape. The established houses were out in force — Davidoff and Plasencia anchoring the day with their usual polish, alongside Rocky Patel and Tatuaje, whose founders were both present. Around them gathered a broad and genuinely international field: ADVentura, Casdagli Cigars, PDR Cigars, Foundation Cigars, West Tampa Tobacco Co., Freud Cigar Co., AVD, Chateau Diadem, La Galera, Las Villas, and Hiram & Solomon. It is a lineup that would not embarrass a far larger event, and its breadth — Dominican, Nicaraguan, Honduran, boutique and blue-chip side by side — gave the wandering guest a real cross-section to work through over an afternoon.
The spirits houses were no afterthought either. Rémy Martin, The Dalmore, and Tamdhu supplied the liquid counterpoint to the leaf, while Speciality Brands — whose portfolio includes the Japanese whisky house Nikka — and Heaven Hill Distillery held stands of their own.
The heart of the programme lay in the pairing masterclasses, hosted through the afternoon by the brands themselves. These are the sessions where a festival earns its keep, and Summertime Smoke assembled a genuinely enviable roster of hosts.
Tim Griek opened proceedings for Plasencia, pairing the house’s cigars against The Dalmore — a sensible marriage of Nicaraguan depth with the Highland malt’s dried-fruit richness. Pete Johnson followed for Tatuaje, setting his blends against Heaven Hill’s American whiskey, a pairing with more swagger and sweetness to it. Rocky Patel took the afternoon into cognac territory with Rémy Martin, before Jeremy Casdagli of Casdagli Cigars offered a more contemplative session paired with Nikka Japanese whisky, poured courtesy of Speciality Brands. George Frakes of Foundation Cigars closed the sequence, pairing against Tamdhu’s sherried Speyside character.
What made these sessions work was not the theory but the company. Hearing a maker talk through their own tobacco while you draw on it, glass in the other hand, is an education no tasting note can replicate. The rooms were full, the questions were sharp, and the atmosphere throughout was warm rather than solemn — this was pleasure being taken seriously, not seriousness dressed as pleasure.
A cigar festival held on a shooting ground would be remiss not to use it, and Summertime Smoke duly offered clay pigeon shooting as an add-on experience. The organisers were firm — and correct — on the one non-negotiable: no shooting after so much as a welcome cocktail. Guests who booked a session did their shooting first and earned their samples after, which lent the morning arrivals a pleasant sense of ceremony. There is something very English about the sequence: shoot, then smoke, then drink, in that order and never confused.
Elsewhere, the accessory side of the trade had its moment too. Henk drew a steady crowd with the introduction of their Cigar Cube humidors to UK — a neat, design-led take on storage that had collectors turning them over in their hands and quietly recalculating shelf space at home. In a category where craftsmanship and controlled humidity are everything, a well-made humidor draws its own devoted audience, and the Cube found one.
For all the conviviality, one subject threaded through nearly every conversation on the grass, and it was not a blend or a vintage. It was the prospect of plain packaging legislation for cigars in the UK — a proposal currently under government consultation that would strip the bands, boxes, and branding that are, for many, inseparable from the object itself.
The mood was less panic than resolve, but the concern was real and widely shared. For an industry built on heritage, craft, and the visual romance of the band, standardised packaging is not a cosmetic threat — it strikes at how these products are recognised, differentiated, and cherished. Producers and consumers alike found themselves discussing it not as an abstraction but as a live question with a deadline.
Into that conversation stepped Save Cigars, who used their presence at the festival to explain, in practical terms, how importers and consumers can make their voices heard. Their message was straightforward: the government consultation is open, participation is possible, and anyone who cares about the future of premium cigars in Britain can respond directly — registering their objection and adding weight to the case against the proposals. It was, in a sense, the most important stand at the festival: a reminder that the pleasure everyone had gathered to enjoy is not guaranteed, and that appealing through the proper channels is how it gets defended.
By late afternoon, with the light softening over the Chilterns and the fields still hazy, Summertime Smoke had made its case. The second edition was livelier and more assured than a young festival has any right to be — a day where world-renowned makers, dedicated ambassadors, and ordinary enthusiasts mixed without hierarchy, where the pairings genuinely taught something, and where even the looming regulatory cloud served to sharpen rather than sour the sense of community.
Everybody, quite simply, had fun. And beneath the fun ran a quiet seriousness of purpose — a shared understanding that occasions like this are worth turning out for, and worth fighting to keep.
The Summertime Smoke is owned and organised by Havana House.
