James Suckling

Lost in Translation

Posted: Mar 21, 2007 4:01pm ET

I am back in Italy at the moment and I started to think about a funny incident last week while I was in Hong Kong for some wine tastings. I was hanging out with my friend Alex Wong, who has to be one of the biggest cigar collectors as well as wine collectors in the world. We were smoking some cigars in the evening, and an Italian friend came by to see Alex’s cigar collection, which could number as many as 4,000 boxes.

Anyway, my Italian friend came into Alex’s cigar room and began looking around. And he was really impressed. After looking at an amazing selection of smokes on the grand floor, I took him upstairs to a room full of hundreds of cabinets of Hoyo and Punch Double Coronas as will as various Churchills.

My friend said in Italian: “Those are nice, the 50s of Punch Double Coronas.”

“Si,” I said. “Multo buono.”

“How much do they cost?” he said to me.

I thought that was sort of a strange thing to say. But I told him that they were probably $400 or $500 a box since they were aged. They were from 1997.

“I take two boxes then,” he said with a big smile.

He was serious! Alex’s cigar collection was so fricking big that my friend thought he was in a cigar shop!

I had to explain to him that it was a private collection of cigars and that they were not for sale.

“OH MY GOD!” he said, shaking his head. “I had no idea.”