Davidoff’s Latest Avo Seasons Cigar Is The Smoke Of The Summer

Hit the beach with these fine stogies.

Summer cigar season is upon us, and the new “cigar of the summer” may be waiting in a humidor near you right now.

Davidoff’s Avo Seasons is a new line of cigars in the fabled brand once owned by the late jazz legend Avo Uvezian. Each of the four releases for 2023 plays on an initial theme, with alterations to the tobaccos used for the wrapper leaf.

For the spring edition, for instance,  floral Dominican San Vicente seco and the Hybrid 192 visus tobaccos aged up to 14 years were wrapped by a light-colored Ecuador Corojo wrapper selected for its sweetness of wood, cream and coffee flavors.

The summer edition features a darker, peppery Ecuador Corojo wrapper atop a similar blend of Dominican filler tobaccos aged up to 14 years, bringing out notes of dark chocolate.

The Fall and Winter editions also vary on the theme — a Mexican San Andres wrapper adds spice and sweetness to the Fall edition, while the Winter release winds down the collection with herbal, woody notes and hints of baking spices featuring an Ecuador Connecticut wrapper.

Uvezian, who passed away in 2017 at age 91, left an incredible legacy in his wake, including more than 70 years of musical achievements. 

A jazz pianist by trade, Uvezian played for the Shah of Iran as a band member before attending Juilliard in the 1960s. He spoke a dozen languages — English, French, Armenian, Farsi, and Turkish among them. 

In 1966, Uvezian played one of his own songs “Broken Guitars” for Frank Sinatra. Allegedly, Sinatra loved the melody, and convinced Uvezian to toss his own title and lyrics — the song that came from that conversation was “Strangers in the Night,” though Bert Kaempfert is credited with the melody.

Uvezian made his way into the cigar world via Switzerland in the 1980s, where he enjoyed his first cigar after the christening of his daughter. Legend has it Uvezian loved cigars but hated the high price of what was available. He partnered with Davidoff cigar legend Hendrik Kelner to make the Avo line — many of the first of these smokes were sold one at a time from a cigar box atop his piano. 

The cigars were popular— more than a million sold in the first five years, eventually leading to Davidoff buying the brand outright in 1995 for a cool $10 million. Avo continued to tour for the brand, particularly for the annual releases of his “birthday” cigars up until the last one was released in 2017.

“This special release has been carefully created by our Master Blenders who have worked with tobaccos across multi-faceted origins to craft the perfect seasonal blends,” says Edward Simon, CMO at Oettinger Davidoff.

“We encourage our aficionados to enjoy each cigar while experiencing a moment unique to each season: walking through a garden in spring, watching the setting sun on a summer evening, feeling the air turn crisp as autumn leaves fall, and sitting by a crackling fire in winter.”

Where to start is luckily determined for you at this point — finding the Spring release may take some work, and Fall and Winter won’t be available for some time yet. I’m particularly excited by the heartier Summer and Fall releases, though if you’re a fan of milder smokes you may want to wait until winter.

The spring release of AVO Seasons Limited Edition Series 2023 launched in March with a global footprint of 4,000 boxes. Summer, which is out this month globally, was created in the same volume. All Avo Seasons releases come in boxes of 10, in a diadema format measuring 6 5/8 inches by 50 ring gauge. 

A final suggested retail price of $18 per cigar across all four releases won’t include taxes, so your cost to smoke may vary, but if you’ve been a fan since Avo still tickled the ivories, you may want to grab a few of each release while you can, starting with Summer if possible. 

Of all people, Avo would have liked the idea of having enough of a stockpile to enjoy summer all year long.

Clay Whittaker is Maxim contributor covering lifestyle, whiskey, cigars, cannabis, and travel. His work has also appeared in Men’s Journal, Cigar Aficionado, Playboy, Esquire, Forbes, and Town and Country. Check out his other work here, and follow him on Instagram.