La Flor Dominicana
During 2015 Nic Wing
had the opportunity
to sit down in London
with Tony Gomez
the son of Litto Gomez the creator of the
company which he runs with his wife Ines
Lorenzo-Gomez
Having majored in English at university in
Florida Tony told me there was no pressure to
go into the family business however, in his last
two years at university he knew that his heart
was in the tobacco business with his family.
He left University and went straight out on the
road selling cigars. He told me he learned what
his customers really wanted and valued in the
companies cigars.
Two years ago he moved to Tamboril, in the
Dominican Republic where the company has its
factory and its farm. La Flor Dominicana is a very
young company having recently celebrated its
20th anniversary. The company started in 1994
with just 6 rollers.
Tony told me that the early days were a very steep
learning curve with a lot of trial and error. They
pursued quality relentlessly and decided that the
solution was a unique approach with total vertical
integration. They invested in their own farm
which has now grown to 250 acres with plans to
add a further 30 acres in the near future.
Farm and factory have grown organically as the
company has matured. The area in which the farm
7
is located is very hot and this leads them to grow
very powerful tobacco. This was one of Litto’s
plans and the reason he selected the location
of the farm. He wanted to satisfy his love for
powerful cigars.
Having total control of the farm means that they
can control the plants. This means they can focus
on the plants, they pick out the lower leaves to
make all the strength of the plant in the higher
leaves. Around 50 - 75% of the tobacco comes from
their own farms.
They even grow their own wrapper for their
Dominican Puros (100% Dominican tobacco).
It proved very hard to grow wrapper due to the
heat which generates thicker leaves. But with
persistence they have learned how to do this.
They have introduced technology into drying
barns to totally control heat and humidity in all
corners to ensure consistency. Drying takes 45 –
60 days in the barns, but they often need some
humidity in the atmosphere to allow them to
transfer the tobacco to the curing barns without
damaging the leaf
We talked about Maduro wrappers, which they are
famous for. These start out high on the plants and
they are thick, rich and oily (they call it honey).
The fermentation of their powerful ligero leaves
is a long process. 6ft high piles of leaves generate
weight and heat. This creates a furnace inside
the pile with temperatures reaching as high as
150 degrees in the centre of the pile in the first
fermentations. This literally burns off all the harsh
characteristics, this also darkens the leaves and
this gets darker the longer the leaf is left.