An unfamiliar sight I gazed upon through the humidor glass in the James J. Fox Selfridges store. A dark cigar sat behind the glass, finished with a braided tobacco band at the head.

I immediately inquired.

"Amazon Basin," I was told.

This CAO cigar was built around one of the rarest tobaccos used in modern cigar making: Bragança, grown deep within the Brazilian Amazon.

Bragança tobacco is harvested only once every three years. It is cultivated by just a handful of small local farming communities, which is why Amazon Basin releases remain perpetually limited.

Importantly, Bragança is used as an accent leaf within a blend that also includes Brazilian Mata Fina, Colombian, Dominican, and Nicaraguan tobaccos under an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper. This allows CAO to stretch the limited Bragança supply while letting its unique flavour influence the entire cigar.

Needless to say, I wasted no time in securing one of these rare cigars.

A cigar born in the rainforest deserved to be smoked somewhere green.

I made my way to Regents Park.

The sun sat high in the sky. Not a cloud in sight. A gentle breeze moved through the trees.

The cigar looked almost naked in my hand, just a thin band at the head signifying it has an end.

My mind travelled to the Amazon and then back again to where my feet touched the ground in London - the journey this cigar took to land in my hand was not lost on me.

I lit the cigar.

It grew steadily in strength with every draw.

As the foot of the cigar approached the woven tobacco band, my intrigue spiked.

The tobacco band burnt beautifully with the cigar, adding a final burst of sharp spice.

It grounded me; it slowed the pace of the afternoon.

Then, just as I settled into its rhythm, the woven tobacco band delivered one final burst of spice, as if reminding me where it had come from.

Every centimetre of the cigar was smoked.

Nothing wasted.

There was a certain intimacy to smoking the band. I learnt every inch of that cigar.

This was a privilege to smoke.

Whether the story changes the flavour is almost irrelevant.

Ultimately, stories change us.

Once you know where something came from, it becomes impossible not to taste a little of its journey.

Every draw feels like the final chapter of a much longer story.

Everything we value has travelled further than we realise.

The coffee beside us.

The cigars we smoke.

Even the people we love.

We rarely see everything that shaped them.

Perhaps slowing down is simply remembering that every meaningful thing arrives carrying a history we cannot immediately see.

Before it reached my hand, this cigar had already lived a remarkable life.

Every cigar begins as earth.

This one simply travelled further than most.

From the Amazon rainforest to central London, remarkable stories are constantly crossing our paths.

We simply have to notice them.

Long before CAO became known for the Amazon Basin, it wasn't a cigar company at all.

Founded by Turkish immigrant Cano Ozgener, CAO began life crafting hand-carved meerschaum pipes; an art deeply rooted in his homeland. It wasn't until the cigar boom of the 1990s that the company turned its attention to premium cigars.

Rather than competing by producing another traditional Dominican or Nicaraguan blend, CAO took a different path. It searched the world for unusual tobaccos and forgotten growing regions, releasing cigars that showcased leaves from Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia and Italy.

The Amazon Basin became the culmination of that philosophy. A cigar built around one of the rarest tobaccos used in modern cigar making; introducing something entirely new to modern cigar making.

Have you tried Rafael Gonzalez cigars before?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes - I enjoy them (100%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes - But they not for me
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Not yet!

For the first time we have a unanimous poll results, a real testament to Rafael Gonzalez.

Until next time.

Yours truly,
The Cigar Lover

Cigar Maps | Never be far from a good cigar
Explore the map and connect with the global cigar community →

Forward this to a fellow Cigar Lover, they may appreciate it.

Cigar Letters
^{No. 24}