2015 Chattanooga Tweet-Up Preview

In the beginning it all seemed like just a fun way to spend a couple summer days…

For the fifth consecutive year, Burns Tobacconist in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is hosting the Chattanooga Tweet-Up and Cigar Festival. It’s been consuming a lot of my time, both on the clock and off, for the past few weeks but “go-time” is only one week away. In case you haven’t heard about what we’re doing, I thought I’d share a little here with you today. If you’ve been on the fence about coming, there’s still time to buy tickets…if this is the first you’ve heard of the event, just know that Chattanooga is not an expensive place to visit, so you can still make plans to be here.

All About The Herf

This is a fairly sizable, multi-vendor cigar festival. As such we’ve been compared to the Big Smoke and Cigar Fest, but we’ve gone to great lengths to differentiate ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with those much larger festivals…I’ve enjoyed visiting them myself! Running around a large convention hall with a ticket book and grabbing as many cigars as you can is actually a lot of fun…but it doesn’t really give you time to get to know the manufacturers, much less the other people in attendance. And that’s our biggest difference.

Buy a ticket to the Chattanooga Tweet-Up (also known by the hashtag #CHAtweetup2015) and you get a grab-bag of cigars from the different sponsors when you register. How many is impossible to answer before we get all the sponsors lined up and the cigars in the house (I still have companies committing at this late date), but the usual number is between 10 and 15. We then have “mini-events” within the big event, as well as specific time for the reps to meet with customers in the humidor…and besides that, there is plenty of time to hang out and smoke a cigar and just chat with the rep from Cubanacan (that would be my old friend, Nate McIntyre) or ask the owner of 262 Cigars (Clint Aaron) what the name of his company is all about.

It’s really all about a smaller, more personal environment where you get to meet the industry folks that are in attendance and get to know them…and you get to meet some of the Twitter and Facebook friends you’ve made over the years. We have people coming into town from as close as Nashville and Atlanta, and as far as away as Miami, Pittsburgh, Michigan and even California.

Sponsoring Companies & Guests

I mentioned a couple of the sponsors above, but the list seems to be growing and changing almost daily. I’ll go over the highlights, though…

We have 4 “Platinum” sponsors…these are people who have committed to helping us build the event and underwrite it. They are getting top billing and every attendee will get a cigar from them:

Tarazona Cigars: Eddie Tarazona will be joining us once again. This year his cigars will be paired with our liquor tasting, which features Prichard Distillery’s Rum.

Dissident Cigars: Ryan and Gorden from Dissident will be in the house again and will most likely be up to massive amounts of mayhem.

Caldwell Cigars: Robert Caldwell will be back in the ‘Noog, the home city of one of the schools he was kicked out of as a young man…the man’s full of good stories and not all of them are about cigars!

Miami Cigar & Company: Willy Marante will be on hand from Miami Cigar. We have worked with them to get our Burns exclusive 100 Años Cameroon Lancero into each grab bag, too.

Our Gold Sponsors are committing to a larger-than-normal number of cigars and some of them are helping to underwrite our “drink tickets.” These companies include Commonwealth Cedar Spills, GTO Cigars, CLE Cigar Company, Xikar, Kings Cigars, Maya Selva Cigars, and Villiger Cigars.

Finally we have the “Silver Sponsors” that are sending cigars and (for the most part) representation. All of them are great companies that we love working with: 262 Cigars, Nomad, Jaxsin Cigars, Drew Estate, Crowned Heads, Guayacan, Cubanacan, Oliva, A.J. Fernandez, Room101, Perdomo, Rocky Patel, My Father, Primer Mundo, Jordan Alexander III, Punch, Nat Sherman, Cigar Blueprint, Espinosa, and Imperia.

There are always some surprises in store, as well. Special guests who don’t tell me they are going to be around until the day of…companies we haven’t heard of that break out and become big.

One of those companies from a few years ago was Guayacan Cigars. Noel Rojas is making a special cigar for us as a “Thank You” to the Tweet-Up. All the details are HERE.

Discounts, Free Stuff, & Giving Back

I won’t lie and say we aren’t going to try to sell you cigars (and accessories) during the Tweet-Up. We are a cigar shop and that is our business. But we are going to treat you like a member of our lounges during the event, with good discounts on everything you buy…and Burns East does have the biggest walk-in humidor and largest cigar selection in the state of Tennessee. Plus we’re getting in “the new stuff” from the IPCPR show orders on an almost daily basis right now.

Each event ticket purchased will get raffle ticket entries into two different raffles. The General Raffle will include all the expected items: t-shirts, hats, small accessories, maybe some cigar 5-packs. The “Special Raffle” will include some higher dollar items, such as boxes of cigars or autographed accessories. Each attendee will get a single Special Raffle ticket with no chance to get additional ones. Extra General Raffle tickets will be awarded when you buy more cigars in the shops. In honor of one of previous big raffle prize winners who recently left this world, we have named this year’s raffle the Jon Pelham Memorial Raffle.

We are also taking some items and putting them up for auction. Last year we raised over a $1,000 for the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation, which is dedicated to building schools and providing humanitarian services to children in the Dominican Republic.

Finally, the CRA

If you haven’t been a member of the Cigar Rights of America, all I have to say is, “Why not?” If you’re coming to the Tweet-Up this year, you can remedy it really quickly. Basically, it’s like this: you bought a Tweet-Up ticket and you get a year of CRA membership included…and an extra cigar when you provide the CRA rep with your information so he can officially register you.

The CRA is doing the Lord’s work, fighting the nanny-state smoke Nazis who want to take away your rights to enjoy a legal, adult pleasure. They are working at city, state and federal levels to limit or eliminate smoking bans that simply don’t make sense, as well as keep a lid on excessive regulation of premium cigars so that we can all keep enjoying them.

I feel like I’ve said everything I can say…if you want more information, visit the Burns Website…you can also buy tickets there on the “Shop” page.