CAO is a relative newcomer to cigars, but no less successful than some of the established brands such as Padron, Romeo y Julieta, and Montecristo. They were originally pipe makers until they broke into the cigar industry and went off with a bang. They’ve since become known for bold blends, innovative and unique packaging, and excellent quality. I’ve written about one of their newest blends, the OSA Sol, in another review. Today I’ll be going over one of their older ones, the Brazilia. It’s created with a dark Brazilian maduro …
Home to tech giants, baseball Giants, and generally one of the nicest places in America to live, San Francisco is also home to some of the country’s strictest anti-smoking laws. Thankfully for cigar smokers, however, lawmakers decided to included a clause in the now 6-year-old smoking ban to allow owner-operated establishments existing prior to the ban to maintain their smoking status. While such establishments are exceedingly rare, fortunately one such place existed — the Occidental Cigar Club.
At first glance I suspected that the Club would be a bonafide members only …
The Angel 100 series of cigars was named in honor of Angel Oliva, Sr., the patriarch of the Oliva Tobacco Company. Angel Oliva was born in 1907 and came to the United States from Cuba in the late ’20s. He would eventually find himself working as an assistant to an unsuccessful tobacco broker in Tampa, Florida. He would prove himself as a tobacco broker by rebuilding his employer’s firm to financial success, and then create his own firm, the Oliva Tobacco Company (OTC), in 1934. OTC now operates and manages …
Infused cigars. The two words together tend to bring hate and discontent among many cigar smokers for various reasons. Many of them have a chemical taste to them from being flavored rather than infused, low in the quality of the tobacco, or just the taste of the cigar itself. There are few cigar makers that can do it well, and even they have quite an uphill struggle with more traditional cigar smokers who would prefer a Padron, Romeo y Julieta, or Montecristo. The Marty family of Honduras managed to do …
Oliva Cigar Company is a widely successful cigar maker. Their history can be traced as far back as 1886 when the Oliva family was growing tobacco in Cuba. After the Cuban Revolution they emigrated out and eventually settled in Nicaragua, where they have become one of the most successful and largest growers and distributors of Nicaraguan tobacco. The Oliva family has only recently entered the cigar industry in the early 1990s when the cigar boom was taking place. Their initial entry wasn’t anything huge, and widely unnoticed. Slowly that changed …
The CAO cigar company is another relative newcomer in the world of cigars. They were established in 1968 and survived the cigar boom, when numerous cigar companies came and even more fell. They’ve created numerous lines and blends with equally unique and innovative packaging. Now they’ve created another new line, the CAO OSA Sol. The secret behind the OSA Sol is the unique wrapper, a proprietary Honduran leaf grown in Olancho, San Agustin, which provides a robust earthy and fuller bodied flavor and aroma. To balance out the wrapper, a …
