While Blackbird's official 10th Anniversary blend has yet to hit the humidor, a prelude celebration smoke has arrived, and it has quite the mouthful of a name: Pura Raza de Quisqueya Prensado.

Translated directly to English, pura raza means "purebred," while Quisqueya is the name of a town in the San Pedro de Macorís province that is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Further translation of the old dialect spoken by the indigenous people of that area reveals that the word Quisqueya means "mother of the earth," or "large land." Nowadays, the term is commonly used as a patriotic word for the Dominican Republic and its cultural heritage, despite also sharing Haitian heritage.

The cigar is a 6″ x 52 box-pressed toro featuring, you guessed it, a purebred stallion on the band. While it may be strange to see a Blackbird blend without some sort of avian species' name scrawled across its brightly colored cigar band, this classy, old-world approach looks right at home on this smoke. The reason why that band (and its stunner of a dressing box) looks so at home is because this cigar features a top-grade Ecuadorian Connecticut-shade wrapper that is of the finest quality.

Artfully crafted at the company's Dominican factory with an undisclosed binder and filler mixture, this rarity is only being rolled to the tune of 500 boxes, with just 10 cigars being encased in each box. Furthermore, this cigar is intended to serve as tribute to Blackbird’s master blender, Papo “El Caballo.” That being said, it has been announced that going forward, this smoke will become a limited annual run, with our Klaro Members receiving the very first round ever released to the U.S. market.