21,000 Rare Cigars Made Available to General Public CAO, one of the world’s foremost premium cigar manufacturers, announced today that it is releasing 200 CAO Humidors each containing 105 CAO Gold Maduro cigars obtained from the CAO Escaparate (taken from the Spanish word meaning “showcase”). The CAO Escaparate is a climate-controlled, walk-in humidor-in-the-round that houses over 400,000 prototype cigars and is located at the Company’s Nashville headquarters. CAO Gold Maduro was one of 11 original ‘Concept Series’ cigar blends housed within the Escaparate and received such positive feedback from guests of CAO that the CAO Gold Maduro blend was launched into the premium cigar marketplace as a CAO brand earlier this year. Each of the 200 CAO Humidors will contain 105 of the original Gold Maduro cigars that have been aging within the CAO Escaparate since 2004. The cigars will be comprised of a combination of the following shapes: Corona, Robusto, Corona Gorda, Churchill, Torpedo, and Double Corona. The humidors and cigars will begin shipping to select retail tobacconists across the country in November. CAO America recently became CAO’s tenth brand to receive a ‘90’ rating (“OUTSTANDING”) in the October 9 edition of Cigar Insider and was also the ‘Featured Cigar’ of the issue. ---------------------------------------------------------- CAO International, Inc. is the producer of one of the country’s top lines of premium cigars, Meerschaum pipes and pipe tobaccos. Founded by Cano A. Ozgener in Nashville as a labor of love 39 years ago, today CAO products can be found on every continent in the world with the exception of Antarctica. CAO produces ten cigar lines that have all been rated ‘90’ (“OUTSTANDING”) or above by Cigar Aficionado and Cigar Insider.