CAO Amazon Basin Returning For 2025
If you missed last year’s release of CAO Amazon Basin from General Cigar Co., the 2025 series is shipping today. The limited-edition cigar is made with a five-country blend, but the standout tobacco is an Amazonian leaf in the filler called Bragança.
Grown in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, Bragança seedlings are planted a yard apart from one another, which results in much smaller yields than those of typical tobacco crops. After harvesting, the leaves are rolled by hand into dense logs called carottes which undergo a six-month fermentation. According to General, the carottes of tobacco are then loaded onto a canoe and paddled out of the jungle down the Amazon River. From there, the tobacco heads to the STG Estelí factory in Nicaragua, where CAO cigars are produced.
Like last year, the cigar comes in one size, measuring 6 inches by 52 ring gauge. The blend is also the same: a high-priming Ecuador Sumatra wrapper, a Nicaraguan binder and filler from Colombia and the Dominican Republic, as well as the Brazilian Bragança. Unlike last year, it’s a bit more expensive with a suggested retail price of $14.49 (up 20 cents from 2024).
CAO Amazon Basin comes in rustic, 18-count boxes, which has been one of the brand’s signatures since it was introduced in 2014.
