Litto's Twist of Fate (continued)

By David Savona

The shapes might catch a smoker's eye, but it's the taste that keeps him coming back. The El Jocko is distinctive, The Chisel as bold as a cigar can be, loaded with red pepper spice and a solid core of leather. Their blends are possible because Gomez's farm provides a special inventory. Owning the field rather than simply buying tobacco freed him to make more complex cigars. Like an artist with a pallet limited to black and white who suddenly discovers tubes of scorching crimson and brilliant yellow, Gomez blossomed creatively.

"This farm is like a huge blending room for us," says Gomez. "This is where the cigars start." Gomez's satisfaction is visible even in the dim light of the curing barns, which are full of tobacco. Bulks of cured tobacco lie under plastic sheets on the floor in several barns, each of which houses thousands of leaves curing either on wooden poles known as cujes or strings known as sartas. Less refined, the sartas hold leaves that will become filler and with which breakage isn't much of an issue. The leaves in which he hopes to wrap cigars require the coddling that the rigid cujes provide.

Gomez eagerly grabs a leaf, unwraps its wrinkled form and points to the rich, reddish brown color emanating from the edges of the still green center. "Perfect curing," he says. The next leaf is the color of tanned leather, and he puts it near his boot for comparison. The colors are nearly identical. "When it looks like my boot, it passes the test," he chuckles.

Gomez grows all types of seeds at the farm: piloto Cubano, the traditional seed of the area that yields the country's best filler; Sumatra, a toothy, difficult wrapper leaf that he has struggled to grow well; Corojo, which he plants in a range of shade and sun conditions. The various tobaccos add strength, complexity and earthy, robust flavor. The LG Diez, his pride and joy, is wrapped with Cuban-seed leaf he grows under shade at the farm, the first of his cigars to use that wrapper. "When you taste some of our blends and compare them to what a Dominican cigar was 10 years ago, it doesn't taste like a Dominican cigar," he says. "The farm has brought us choices."

Gomez is a demanding boss, and he often finds himself at odds with his agronomist over how to do things. Standing in a curing barn that's being filled with piloto Cubano, he frowns at the sound made by the women sitting on the floor, binding leaves to the sartas. "You hear that cracking?" he asks. "That's the stem being snapped. I hate that sound." Walking through the tightly packed plants in a nearly mature field, he stomps on two that have been damaged to ensure that workers won't harvest their inferior leaves.

Gomez is not afraid to innovate within the tradition-bound world of tobacco. He instituted a system of marking harvested leaves with different color strings to denote the primings they came from. (Primings are locations on the plant from which the leaves are harvested—leaves closer to the top of the plant, known as upper primings, need more time in the fermenting bulks than lower primings.) He also installed an advanced climate-controlled barn at the far end of the farm. After some trial and error, it's fully operational, allowing for better, faster curing.

The gorgeous farm includes a small house decorated with purple bougainvillea. On its patio Gomez can reflect on a day spent in the fields. A barn holds three Paso Fino horses the high-stepping beauties that are the equine equivalent of tap dancers. Gomez is an expert rider—as a child in Uruguay he, along with his brothers, would often sneak into a farm at night and ride horses bareback, using their belts as makeshift stirrups.

La Flor Dominicana recently acquired a second, smaller farm virtually next door. Measuring 40 acres, this one will be owned solely by the company. It has sat largely idle for the past three years, so the soil is rested and ready. "I probably want to do Corojo and Sumatra there," says Gomez, envisioning the possibilities of having even more tobacco inventory. "I want to have tobacco that's 10 years old. We're experimenting. It gives you untold options for your blends."

Business has never been better for La Flor Dominicana. All its cigars are made by hand in one factory. Most are sold under the La Flor Dominicana name, which spans everything from the very mild Connecticut-shade-wrapped cigars in the original La Flor Dominicana line to the bolder Ligeros and absolutely powerful Double Ligero Chisels. There is also the limited LG Diez brand, created when Gomez celebrated his 10th year in business, as well as the Coronados. Few La Flor cigars are extremely expensive—special releases such as the Factory Press sell for around $16—but none are cheap.

Unit sales have nearly doubled in only two years. The company made 1.5 million cigars in 2004, 1.9 million in 2005 and 2.9 million last year. This year it hopes to produce around 3.7 million. "We've been preparing for this," says Gomez, "building inventory for a long time."

Contributing to La Flor's growth has been the creation of an in-house sales force that has virtually ended its reliance on brokers. "For a small company, it's very expensive to hire your own salespeople," says Gomez. "Ines and I debated that." Company salespeople are the uncompromised face of the brand, but they draw a salary and incur expenses. Brokers operate on commission, but they represent many brands and operate on their own.

For La Flor the process started in 2002 and came piecemeal, as it added one salesperson at a time, beginning in Texas, where sales were slim. Today the company has five salespeople and only one broker, as well as a national sales manager.

Last year's soaring increase in production came without adding many workers—Gomez pushed the number of hours they worked, a good short-term fix but not a practical long-term solution. Gomez has 66 cigarmakers working now, and intends to have 80 by around midyear. "That will be the full capacity of the rolling room," he says. Over the summer, he'll have the rollers begin working Saturdays as well. Between the longer hours and the additional workers, his production will rise to nearly 4 million cigars.

He doesn't want to get much bigger. "By the end of this year, we will be as big as we want to be," he says with a puff of his cigar. "This is where we feel comfortable, without having to delegate too much—that's the part I don't like. There comes a moment when you start delegating and it all becomes corporate. You lose touch."

Gomez has proven himself to his colleagues, and to critics and consumers as well. He flies each Monday or Tuesday to Santiago from his home in Miami, and flies home at the end of the week. Lorenzo-Gomez runs the distribution from the offices of Premium Imports Inc. in Coral Gables. "She runs the most difficult part of the company," Gomez says with admiration. "Her contribution to the company is what allows me to be here, thinking about cigars and creating. It's such peace of mind."

He takes another pull on his cigar and squints at the full curing barns across the dirt road. The air is momentarily still, and from far away the braying of El Jocko, who still roams nearby, can briefly be heard above the melodic song of the birds.

"I wouldn't change this for anything. Retirement is not in my plans. I never dreamed of having the amount of personal satisfaction that I've had," he says with his charismatic smile. "Our goal is to build brand loyalty and to be recognized as one of the great brands in the cigar world. And I think we still have a lot of work to do."

Photos by Betsy Hansen

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