CAO Italia

CAO Italia has been in production since 2004 at the CAO Fabrica de Tobacos in the Honduran town of Danli.

The CAO Company (named after the initials of its owner and creator, Cano Aret Ozgener) was founded in 1968 to produce pipes. In 1980, Ozgener decided to start manufacturing his own cigars. He called his first brand Casa de Manuel, but picked a bad time for coming on to the market, since cigars were not particularly popular at the time. This slump in trade meant failure, and Cano was forced to confine himself to making pipes and the humidors that he had also started making.

But during the mid 1990s, the US saw the beginning of a cigar boom, and Ozgener made a second attempt. The new cigars were manufactured in Honduras by a well-known specialist, Nestor Placenya, under the unpretentious name of CAO and are still produced as CAO Black.

 

Over the next eight years, the number of CAO brands rose to seven. Not having its own production facilities, the company worked with a number of factories in Nicaragua and Honduras, while apart from Placenya, other well-known cigar makers like Douglas Puringer, Nick Perdomo and the Toraсo family also manufactured cigars for CAO.

In 2003, an event occurred that changed CAO's status among the cigar companies. After long negotiations, an agreement was signed to acquire some of the factories belonging to the Toraсo family in Nicaragua and Honduras. Now Cano Ozgener became a cigar manufacturer in his own right.

CAO Italia was the first brand to be manufactured at Ozgener's own factory, and the eighth brand in the CAO portfolio. The idea for creating these cigars came after Tim Ozgener, Vice-President of the company, made the acquaintance of Italian tobacco. The Italian Habano sort is grown from seeds that were brought to Italy from Cuba more than forty years ago. It grows in the Benevento Region, in the south of the country between Rome and Naples. This tobacco was used as the basis for creating the new brand, but tobacco from Nicaragua and Peru is also used in the filler, while the binder and wrapper leaves come from tobacco grown from Cuban seeds in Honduras. It could be said that CAO Italia is a continuation of the theme begun with the production of CAO Brazil cigars, in which Brazilian tobacco is used. Apart from the 'geographical' name, they are also linked by the designs used on the ribbons and boxes. These were done specially for CAO by the American designer, William Meyer, and show representations of the national flags.

At present the Italia line has only three cigars, but according to Tim Ozgener, there will shortly be another one. The format is already known – 114x18.3mm – and it only remains to find a suitable name.

The CAO Italia Cigar Family