Zoom in
Zoom in
Yves Belaubre
Zoom in
Antoine Bathie

QUAI D'ORSAY IS A VERY SPECIAL BRAND, BEARING AN EXCLUSIVE FRENCH NAME AND PACKED WITH ALL THE TASTE AND CHARACTER HABANOS HAVE TO OFFER

Q uai D'Orsay comes to this 19th Habano Festival with a very special  and exclusive launch. On its history and peculiarities, writer and Habano expert Yves Belaubre, and Antonine Bathie, director of SEITA Cigares -Habanos S.A.'s exclusive distributor in the French market- spoke with Excelencias.
Its origin is packed with very interesting details, according to Yves Belaubre. “In the early 1970s, the director of SEITA Cigars, the distributing company, had received a letter from France’s Minister of Finance, Valéry Giscard d›Estaing, who eventually took over as President of France a year later, in which he commented that the country had great artworks, reference fashion, a great development in many fields, was known for the glamour of its perfumes, garments and wines, yet it didn’t have a deluxe cigar to brag about. And he asked him if it was possible to manufacture one. Then, the director general started out a project to come up with a machine-rolled French cigar with tobacco grown in Cameroon.”
Later on, Yves’ father, Gilbert Belaubre was put at the helm of the project and he explained that a deluxe cigar could not be made by machines nor with tobacco leaves from any country. So, a counterproject was introduced: Quai D’Orsay, under the premises that it had to be rolled by hand and using Cuban black tobacco. That marked the beginning of the legend.
According to Yves Belaubre, “the idea of using this name stems from the street where the SEITA head offices are located, which is also a kind of pun that refers to the name of France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thus, in the beginning this cigar was meant to be distributed among the French embassies overseas and among our diplomats.”
The end result was a Habano that delivers an elegant and easy smoke, with notes of precious wood and a variety of woody tastes, in addition to cream and vanilla.
For Antoine Bathie, current director of SEITA Cigares, “Quai D’Orsay is definitely unique. To me, this brand is like a secret diamond which is not so well known in the vast world of Habanos. French aficionados and retailers adore Quai D’Orsay. They feel specially attached to the brand, and they can appreciate its particular and consistent quality. For French people, puffing on a Quai D’Orsay is some sort of epicurean experience that goes beyond that particular moment. You want to enjoy and share that moment with your amigos. In recent decades, the launch of Regional Editions has pursued the objective of conveying the values of Quai D’Orsay all over the world. And it now feels so good to see Habanos putting this cigar in the limelight,” he said.