Blend Celebrating 79th Birthday Of Manuel Quesada
Quesada Cigars will have a special, limited-edition cigar at the PCA show, one celebrating its patriarch, Manuel Quesada, known to just about everyone by his nickname Manolo. The cigar is called Don Manolo 79, as he will turn 79 on April 10, the week before the PCA trade show begins.
Quesada has released other cigars marking his birthdays, including one for his 70th and one for his 75th. This one is a departure. Not only does it break the five-year-rhythm of release, it’s also a blend that he didn’t personally create. In early 2024, Manolo Quesada suffered a stroke and fell during the ProCigar Festival. He is now living in Spain, recuperating, and his daughters Raquel and Patricia run the business, which they acquired in the fall of 2024. They made this birthday blend for him.
“Don Manolo 79 is a personal tribute to our father’s cumpleaños,” says Raquel Quesada, using the Spanish word for birthdays. “We spent years learning from him, just watching how he worked and how he approached blending. For me, that meant learning from the best master blender I know. With this cigar, we wanted to take those lessons and create something special, something that gives back to the man who taught us everything.”
The blend they chose is a Honduran wrapper, a Dominican binder and a filler mix of Dominican and Nicaraguan leaves. One of the tobacco components is particularly old, according to the sisters, a leaf their father had been aging since the 1990s. The cigar is made at the Quesada factory in the Dominican Republic.
Don Manolo 79 measures six inches long by 52 ring, and has a suggested retail price of $21.99 apiece.
The box and bands incorporate the new Quesada logo. If you remove the band, you see a black-and-white illustration of Manuel Quesada, a portrait commissioned by Cigar Aficionado for his induction into the magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2012. The inside lid of the box has the same illustration, but on a purple background.
Quesada Don Manolo 79 will be limited to 1,000 boxes, each containing 10 smokes, for a total run of 10,000 cigars. There will be 700 boxes allocated to the U.S. market and 300 reserved for international distribution. Shipments are expected to commence in August.
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