La Flor de Zaida Brings the Diamond Collection and Ralf Moeller to InterTabac 2026

Some brands go to Dortmund to take orders. La Flor de Zaida goes to make a statement.

InterTabac opens at Messe Dortmund on Tuesday, September 15. Three days, more than 800 exhibitors, around 14,500 trade visitors. In Hall 4, something unique is about to happen. Antonino Piredda and La Flor de Zaida are at booth 4.A22 with the Diamond Collection and a Hollywood star. If you do not have an hour clear in Dortmund, find one. It will pay you back, and I think you already know that.

Table of Contents

The Diamond Collection reaches Europe

Four blends, one size each, twelve months of rest before release. No line extensions, no filler vitolas. Four cigars, chosen and left alone.

The names come from four of the most famous diamonds ever pulled out of the ground, and once you know the stones the line reads differently.

Cullinan (6 x 56). Dominican Habano over Dominican binder and filler, the biggest cigar in the line. Named after the 3,106 carat rough found in South Africa in 1905, still the largest gem quality diamond ever discovered and now cut into the British Crown Jewels.

Excelsior (5 1/2 x 54). A Dominican puro, and among the first blends to run dry at the PCA booth. The Excelsior held the record for the largest diamond ever found until the Cullinan took it in 1905.

Kohinoor (5 1/2 x 54). The only cigar here that is not a Dominican puro, wrapped in dark San Andrés oscuro from Mexico. Fitting, because the Koh-i-Noor is the only one of these four stones that never came out of Africa. It came from India, and its name means Mountain of Light in Persian.

Millennium Star (5 3/4 x 52). Dominican Habano, Dominican binder and filler, the shortest ring gauge in the collection. Its namesake was cut from a 777 carat Congolese rough into a flawless 203 carat pear, and is regarded as one of the most perfect diamonds ever produced.

Carved wood boxes, tobacco leaf reliefs, bands die-cut so the wrapper shows through. You notice these cigars on a table before anyone tells you what they are.

Europe has been reading about the Diamond Collection since April. Hall 4 is where the reading stops and the smoking starts.

Ralf Moeller at the booth on day one

Hall 4, Tuesday morning. The man who stood in the arena in Gladiator is at a cigar stand with one lit, and he is there to talk about it.

That is the meet and greet on September 15.

Moeller went from a gym in Recklinghausen to Mr. Universe to Hollywood, through Gladiator, The Scorpion King and The Tourist, and he has been a cigar man the whole way. He and Piredda are close, which is why he spent hours at this same stand last year, smoking, talking and posing for photographs with anyone who walked up and asked.

How often do you get to share a cigar with a Hollywood star?

Come early. Light a Diamond at the stand and take your time with it, because this is the part of Dortmund people will still be talking about on Wednesday, and a memory you will carry with you for the rest of your life. If you are at the fair, do not miss an opportunity like this one.

What is coming next from La Flor de Zaida

The fair runs three days. What La Flor de Zaida has coming runs a good deal longer than that.

Over the coming months I will be publishing behind the scenes material from La Flor de Zaida. These are not press notes. Antonino Piredda is preparing tributes to people who carry large parts of this industry on their backs, who put in the hours nobody photographs and almost never get named for any of it. He is putting their names on something permanent. I know who and I know how. I am not able to tell you yet. What I can tell you is that it is heartwarming, and that is exactly why I am telling you it is coming.

Then there is the new line. Antonino Piredda has told me himself that blends are already being built for it. No date, no specifications, and I will not invent any. It has a name, and I know it. That is the part that is hard to sit on, because the name alone tells you what these cigars are. And what they are is a tribute. A serious one. The kind of thing a brand only earns the right to make once, and the kind of release nobody who cares about this craft will want to have missed.

Retailers with La Flor de Zaida already on the shelf will not have to think twice when it lands. Everyone else will be making a phone call while the first boxes are already moving.

The people who understand this brand first will be the ones who stood at booth 4.A22 in September.

What you need to know

Fair: InterTabac 2026, Messe Dortmund Dates: Tuesday September 15 to Thursday September 17, 2026 Brand: La Flor de Zaida, Hall 4, booth 4.A22 In focus: Diamond Collection (Cullinan, Excelsior, Kohinoor, Millennium Star) Special guest: Ralf Moeller, meet and greet on Tuesday September 15 Trade only: InterTabac is open to industry professionals aged 18 and over

I wrote this brand’s hundred year story a while back, and it has been worth watching a name that vanished for decades come back at the top of the market rather than the bottom. Dortmund is where the rest of Europe finally gets to hold it.

Hall 4. Tuesday morning. Do not make it your second stop.

Read the full interview with Antonino Piredda: La Flor de Zaida: A Dream Over 100 Years in the Making