Brand
About CAO
CAO carries the initials of its founder, Cano A. Ozgener, born in Istanbul in 1937 to Armenian parents. He began smoking cigars in 1961, as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York. While working at DuPont he started improving Turkish meerschaum pipes, and in 1977 he went into the pipe business full time, from Nashville.
CAO entered the cigar market in 1993, and the first CAO cigar, made in Honduras, came out in 1995. In 2007 the company was sold to Henri Wintermans, part of the Scandinavian Tobacco Group, and became part of General Cigar in Richmond, Virginia. Cano Ozgener died in Nashville in 2018, at 81.
The FASA trilogy, with Noche, Sol and Sombra, is made at General Cigar Dominicana. The FASA Sombra, which began shipping in April 2025, has an Ecuadorian shade-grown wrapper, a Cameroon binder and filler from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.
My CAO note is the FASA Sombra Toro, which scored 88.
CAO
88 points, My Score
Cream , Almond , Coffee , Hay
A Connecticut that genuinely surprised me. Not the creamiest expression of the style, but it delivers enough creaminess, natural sweetness and softness to create a very enjoyable experience.
