Cuban Quai d’Orsay Clemenceau Rolled Just For France
France will be getting its newest Regional Edition cigar next week, the Quai d’Orsay Clemenceau, and the new smoke celebrates the 50th anniversary of Coprova, France’s official Habanos distributor. The first boxes are scheduled to be in stores on Tuesday, October 12.
The Clemenceau is a standard Churchill size, measuring 7 inches long by 47 ring gauge and comes packaged in slide-lid wood boxes of 10. They’re set to retail for 20.50 euros per cigar (about $23.75) or 205 euros a box (about $237). Only 15,000 boxes are being produced.
Called Julieta No. 2 in Cuban factories, the Clemenceau has the same dimensions as the Romeo y Julieta Churchill, Cohiba Esplendido and the discontinued Quai d’Orsay Imperiales. There are very few Churchills that remain in the Habanos portfolio and not too many in the Regional Edition program, making the Clemenceau an uncommon format.
Quai d’Orsay started in the 1970s as a quieter Cuban cigar brand, one that was largely unknown outside of France. The line consisted of mostly traditional Cuban sizes until Habanos whittled down the portfolio to only one cigar. Then, in 2017, Habanos turned Quai d’Orsay into an international brand, giving it new sizes, a new look and global distribution. Never a strong smoke, the newer Quai d’Orsays had more power, but the brand was always intended to be the Champagne of cigars, favoring elegance over strength in accordance to French tastes. When the Quai d’Orsay Senadores was one of the 2019 Edición Limitadas, it represented the first time a Quai d’Orsay was part of that program, and another step toward bringing the brand into the mainstream.
The Clemenceau is the sixth Quai d’Orsay Regional Edition for France, but it’s not the first release to celebrate Coprova’s 50th. Last year, Coprova marked the same anniversary by re-releasing the Quai d’Orsay Robusto Diplomaticos, a 2015 Regional Edition that had five years of age. It was part of Coprova’s Vintage Selection of aged smokes.
A secondary band on the Clemenceaus indicate the big five-decade milestone for Coprova.
