El Septimo (Spanish for “The Seventh”) is an ultra-premium brand founded in 2005 by French distributor Gilles Botquin and acquired in 2019 by Zaya Younan (Younan Collection / El Septimo Geneva). Once a European and Middle Eastern luxury staple, it expanded into broad U.S. retail under Younan while keeping production in Costa Rica. Historical trade coverage placed early rolling at Pure Aroma Cigars S.A.; the brand now describes its own Costa Rican facilities, so the map links ownership to Younan rather than a single contested factory node.
Collections drive the portfolio—Sacred Arts, Emperor, Zaya, Culinary Art, Gilgamesh, and Alexandra—using multi-origin leaf (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, and more) and long aging as the house signature. On the map, El Septimo sits in Costa Rica’s luxury tier beside the separate Tabacos de Costa Rica ecosystem (Atabey, Byron, Lampert, LH Premium): same country, different ownership and factory story.