Davidoff Releasing $750 Cigar
Remember when the Davidoff Oro Blanco made headlines a decade ago for costing $500 per cigar? Now, that seems like a relative bargain, as a new Davidoff Oro Blanco is about to debut and the price tag is 50 percent more than before: $750 each. (And that’s before taxes.) Called Davidoff Oro Blanco Special Reserve 111 Years, the new cigar will be released on Monday. The cigar was originally scheduled to launch today but complications from Hurricane Milton caused a delay.
The Special Reserve 111 is a follow-up to the 2014 Davidoff Oro Blanco, which at the time of release was the most expensive non-flavored cigar on the market, Cuban or otherwise. It also marked Davidoff’s first vintage cigar, as the tobacco inside was from a banner 2002 crop.
Made in the Dominican Republic at the Cigars Davidoff factory, the all-Dominican cigar is rolled in the same dimensions as the original—a Toro measuring 6 inches by 54 ring gauge—but the blend has changed. While the 2014 edition consisted entirely of leaves from 2002, Special Reserve 111 Years has tobacco that is even older.
The name of the cigar comes from Davidoff adding up the cumulative ages of all the leaves used to make the cigar. According to the company, the tobaccos here have a combined age of 111 years. Here’s how Davidoff breaks down the ages: three leaves in the filler are 17 years old; two more filler leaves are 18 years old; the wrapper is four years old; and the binder, which is the oldest tobacco of the blend, is 20 years old.
“The binder and each filler are at least 17 years old, including one that we have never used in a Davidoff cigar before, and that was grown in an area that we no longer cultivate,” says Oettinger Davidoff chief marketing officer Edward Simon. “It is only rolled by our master roller supervisors with at least 20 years of experience and is only released when our master blenders deem it ready to be enjoyed.”
Davidoff says that the filler tobaccos come from “five terroirs” across the Dominican Republic: Navarrete, Yamasá, Piloto, Mao and Bonao, which is the area the company no longer cultivates.
Oro Blanco Special Reserve 111 Years are sold in either individual wooden coffins or in 10-count wooden cases. Both boxes are inlaid with subtle cedar patterns that resemble the vein structure and shape of a tobacco leaf.
