Dr Gaby Kafie at InterTabac

Dr Gaby Kafie isn’t buying the party line.

“Premium cigars, properly made, are not an efficient deliverer of nicotine, no matter what they try to tell you,” he says from his InterTabac booth.

“And I can prove it.”

More on this to come in a forthcoming issue of Cigar Journal, but suffice to say that after many years in the business, Dr Kafie has lost none of his passion for cigars.

Together with his wife Vivian, Dr Kafie has created one of the most respected brands now made out of the Dominican Republic. Smooth, rich and complex, they are what he calls ‘Agradable’ – pleasant as well as pleasureable.

When a highly qualified medical practitioner (Dr Kafie was a surgeon, forced to retire due to eyesight problems) talks about science, you are advised to listen. And the fact that he maintains nicotine in premium cigars is rendered inert by the traditional, complex and lengthy maturation processes handrolled cigar makers practise, you realise more than ever before the vast distances between machine-made, chemical laden cigarettes and the wonderful world of cigars.

His voice needs to be heard.