Eladio Diaz 70 Aniversario Debuting at InterTabac 2023

For years, Eladio Diaz has made himself a birthday cigar that he would smoke and give to friends and family. Each year, he’d create a different cigar. As time went on, the cigars gained notoriety and he even started putting bands on them, but the cigars were never offered for sale. This year, there will be an Eladio Diaz cigar that references his birthday and it will be sold, just not in the U.S.

At InterTabac 2023, an international tobacco trade show that takes place next month, Diaz and his family will debut the Eladio Diaz 70 Aniversario. It will be offered in a single size, a 7 x 52 Churchill extra, using seven different tobaccos, including an Ecuadorian wrapper, a Mexican binder and fillers from the Dominican Republic.

As for the 70 name, it references more than just his 70th birthday, a milestone Diaz celebrated on May 28. It’s also a play on the number seven. His mother brought a seven-year-old Diaz to a small tobacco factory. Consequently, this year marks 63 years in working with tobacco, 7 x 9 = 63. Diaz suffered a stroke on Nov. 14, 2016; 14 is a multiple of seven and this will be seven years since the stroke.

That carries out to the cigar itself—7 x 52 with seven types of tobacco—which will be sold in boxes of 14 cigars. Pricing has not been announced, but production is limited to 1,400 boxes of 14 cigars.

It will be distributed in Europe by Kopp Tobaccos GmbH & Co., formerly known as Kohlhase & Kopp, but the Diaz family says this cigar will not be sold in America.

InterTabac 2023 takes place Sept. 14-16 in Dortmund, Germany.

Diaz’s birthday cigars gained notoriety during his long career at Davidoff, where he was the production chief of Davidoff’s Dominican operation, responsible for overseeing the cigarmaking. His birthday cigars would share some traits with typical Davidoff profiles but oftentimes would be a lot stronger. In late 2021, Diaz announced that after more than three decades at Davidoff, he and his family were opening their own factory: Tabacalera Diaz Cabrera.

When the factory was announced, the Diaz family said that it would produce only private label cigars. While it has done that, it is now branching out into cigars of its own. In addition to the Eladio Diaz 70 Aniversario, the company is planning a regular production line that is expected to be sold in U.S. stores before the end of this year.