Next month, General Cigar Co. will once again be shipping its popular CAO Amazon Basin, though this time, the cigars will have already been aged for two years before heading to stores.
The CAO Amazon Basin Extra Añejo is the next release in the Amazon Basin Series. Like recent iterations of Amazon Basin, it’s a 6 x 52 toro that uses an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper over a Nicaraguan binder and fillers from Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. The blend is highlighted by Bragança tobacco, which General Cigar Co. comes from the Amazon rainforest. The company says that the tobacco is harvested just once every three years and is rolled into tubes for six months to receive fermentation. It then describes an arduous process of getting the tobacco out of the Amazon, something that General says involves transportation via canoes.
What sets apart the Extra Añejo from previous releases is that these cigars were rolled in 2021. General says they will head to stores after spending two years in a Spanish cedar-lined aging room.
“When we launched Amazon Basin, we were the first in the world to use tobacco from the Amazon,” said Ed Lahmann, senior brand manager of CAO, in a press release. “Today, CAO Amazon Basin still stands out as one of the most important blends we have ever developed. Since we never rest on our laurels, we decided to take a page from the whisky world and age the finished Amazon Basin cigars. The result is a smoke that is refined and rounded, and an absolute pleasure to smoke.”
Amazon Basin debuted in 2014 and has been rereleased multiple times, most recently in January 2022. In addition, General has created a number of cigars as part of the Amazon Basin family, including the CAO Amazon Fumo em Corda, CAO Amazon Anaconda and CAO Orellana.
The MSRP is set at $14.99 per cigar and this release is limited to 5,000 boxes of 18 cigars. Like most CAO cigars, Amazon Basin Extra Añejo is made at STG Estelí in Nicaragua.
General Cigar Co. says it will ship Amazon Basin Extra Añejo on Jan. 9.