It’s harder than it looks to cut a cigar.

At the Hotel Xenia’s inaugural Smokes and Tipples club event on Friday, I tried to look like I knew what I was doing when presented with my Romeo y Julieta Short Churchill hand-rolled cigar.

But that fiction soon faded and I had to ask Mark Gibson from UK cigar importers Hunters & Frankau to show me how it’s done.

It’s vital you don’t cut them too far down, or the five tobacco leaves which make up the delicate structure will start to unravel.

Cigar safely sliced, I spent more than two hours puffing away with a companion while sipping a selection of rums in the Kensington hotel’s open Living Wall terrace below street level.

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For someone used to Captain Morgan the three different rums were deliciously smooth, particularly the final 2001 Plantation Rum from Trinidad.

I can’t pretend to have identified all the notes of tropical fruits, candied orange and cooked molasses this rum boasts of, but it did slip down very nicely.

Apart from wasting a whole box of specially lengthened and odourless matches to relight it, the cigar itself was also enjoyable – the occasional accidental inhalation aside.

The taste became a little harsher as I smoked it – what’s called the ‘profile’ of the cigar changing, apparently – and it produced a pleasantly light-headed feeling.

This will definitely be a better night in summer, when you’ll get evening sun instead of drizzle on the terrace, but for something a little bit different it’s worth a punt – or a puff.

Visit hotelxenia.co.uk