Altar Q Toro Cigar by Oscar Valladares

CAO Amazon Basin Toro Cigar

The CAO Amazon Basin cigar is back! This is the most coveted and unique cigar from CAO
and available as a limited production. The Amazon Basin production process is so
complicated that it takes three years in the making for each new release, but General
Cigar Corp (GCC) assures us that they are using the same exact blend as the original,
keeping the flavour and consistency the same.
The CAO Amazon Basin is a ground breaking project by General Cigars Corp (GCC). The
giant tobacco conglomerate was in search for a new and undiscovered tobacco. With
scouts around the world, they found the exotic tobacco grown deep in the Amazon rain
forest. The Amazon Basin Indians were growing this tobacco in the jungle for generations,
but it was recently discovered twenty years ago by GCC. This tobacco is called “Braganca”
and it goes through a very different cultivation and fermentation process than all other
cigars. Due to the tobacco’s rarity and the fact that it is harvested only ONCE every three
years, only 1500-2000boxes are produced annually depending on crop yield.
Once the tobacco arrives at the CAO factory in Esteli, Nicaragua the CAO’s blenders allow
the aromatic Bragança leaf to take centre stage, surrounded by tobaccos curated from
four different countries. Sheathed in a hearty Ecuadoran Sumatra wrapper from the
highest priming’s, with a Nicaraguan binder and a touch of Nicaraguan leaf in the filler,
CAO Amazon Basin tastes as exotic as the tropical rainforest from which it originated.
The CAO Amazon Basin has a dark, oily, rosado wrapper. It is silky smooth to the touch and
the colour of the ring itself is not far off from its rope that is wrapped around the cigars,
serving as its distinct cigar band. Designed after the old Amazon-Indian tie technique, the
band is made up of a coil of twisted tobacco wrapped around the cigar four times just
down the tip and you can smoke right through the coils. This medium-bodied CAO blend
boasts notes of caramel sprinkled with briny nuances for an adventure into the
unexpected.
Unlike traditional tobacco plantations where the plants are arranged in neat rows, these
seeds are handpicked and planted in areas where there is available sunlight. Once
harvested, the leaves are rolled by hand into tubes called carottes and undergo six months
of natural fermentation, a technique similar to that of Andullo tobacco. Once fermented,
it takes four to six weeks to get them from forest to factory, a process that involves being
hand carried to the river, put into canoes and rowed to the mainland, and then driven to
the port and shipped to Nicaragua where the cigars are made.

Origin: Nicaraguan
Wrapper: Ecuador Sumatra
Binder: Nicaragua
Filler: Columbia
Dominican#
Braganca Brazil