La Flor Dominicanas Rolled by Litto Gomez
A rarity will go on the auction block tonight at the ProCigar Festival in Santiago, Dominican Republic—a box of 100 cigars made entirely by Litto Gomez, who co-owns the La Flor Dominicana cigar brand with his wife, Ines Lorenzo-Gomez.
People like Gomez who oversee cigar factories are called cigarmakers, but they typically leave the actual rolling to their employees. Notable exceptions include the late Rolando Reyes Sr., creator of Puros Indios and Cuba Aliados cigars, and Jose "Pepin" Garcia, men who were trained as actual cigar rollers before they owned their own factories. Garcia was one of 12 working cigar rollers when he opened his first cigar factory in Little Havana, Miami.
Gomez learned how to roll cigars after entering the cigar business 20 years ago, as a way to connect with his industry and learn the ins-and-outs of what goes into a cigar.
"It's something I learned very early. It's not something I do on a regular basis," Gomez told Cigar Aficionado. "I don't have the speed of the rollers. The mechanics are there."
The project began with Gomez setting up his own table in his cigar factory (he dubbed it table No. 1) and making 20 cigars by hand for a charity event at the Little Puff in Washington, D.C. Pleased with that effort, he sat down again to make 100 for the ProCigar Festival. He made the cigars slowly and methodically, entirely by hand, without the use of a bunching machine. He also used all whole leaves, not breaking the leaves apart and making adjustments as typical cigar rollers do. It makes for a cigar that holds a very long ash, but it's a method that would be too costly and slow to employ factory-wide.
"You waste a lot of tobacco doing it that way," he said. The filler blend is a mix of Dominican, Brazilian and Nicaraguan leaves, the binder is Ecuador Sumatra, and the wrapper leaf is one of his own, grown on his tobacco farm in La Canela, Dominican Republic.
Gomez jokes that rolling 100 cigars "took him forever." The project earned him a pleasant ribbing from his staff of cigarmakers, but it's something he plans to revisit.
"Sitting down and rolling cigars is kind of therapeutic for me," he said. "I want to sit there and roll some cigars for me and my friends. I feel very good doing it."
This story originally appeared in Cigar Insider.
