A Conversation With Litto Gomez

[JohnS]

A Conversation With Litto Gomez

The maker of La Flor Dominicana cigars reflects on 30 years of business

By David Savona - From Liev Schreiber, July/August 2025 Cigar Aficionado Magazine

Litto Gomez, the maker of La Flor Dominicana cigars, surrounded by tobacco in his factory in the Dominican Republic.

More than 30 years ago, in 1994, Litto Gomez began making cigars in the Dominican Republic. He was an outsider in a tight-knit world, the first of his family to enter the cigar business and a person who started with little knowledge about the industry. His start was modest—for years, restrained by limits on how much tobacco he could buy, he employed only a dozen cigar rollers. He would eventually expand his operation by adding a farm to grow his own tobacco. Gomez’s cigars have received high scores from Cigar Aficionado magazine, and his La Flor Dominicana Andalusian Bull was named Cigar of the Year for 2016.

Today, he makes millions of cigars each year and his La Flor Dominicana brand is recognized not only around the United States, but all over the world.

La Flor Dominicana is a family business. His wife, company coowner and cofounder Ines Lorenzo-Gomez, runs the sales operations from headquarters in Coral Gables, Florida. His sons, Tony and Litto Jr., are now helping him make cigars. And today, the man who started as an outsider now is president of ProCigar, the Dominican organization that promotes and protects the Dominican cigar industry.

Gomez has expanded and improved his operations in the Dominican Republic, making the grounds of his cigar factory not only larger and more efficient, but also making them look stately and intriguing.

Recently, Gomez sat down with Cigar Aficionado executive editor David Savona for a smoky conversation.

Savona: Litto you’ve been making cigars for just over 30 years now. Tell us about your journey as a cigarmaker and how things have changed for you since those early days.

Gomez: I was a cigar smoker who didn’t know anything about cigars—or cigarmaking. When I made the decision to go to the Dominican Republic and start making cigars, I actually cut a cigar open to see what was inside. I had no idea—I didn’t know if it was chopped filler, paper, I had no idea. And with that total lack of knowledge about it, it was an adventure, it was a crazy adventure.

Q: That was 1994. A lot of companies started around that time, a lot of companies that aren’t here anymore. Early on, did you ever doubt your chance of success?

A: I never doubted it. I knew I could make it. Very early on, I knew that I could make it. That’s how irresponsible I am, that’s how dumb I am.

Q: That’s not being dumb, that’s being confident.

A: That’s being crazy confident. There’s a difference between being confident and crazy confidant, OK? I was the first new factory in the Dominican Republic from someone that didn’t belong to the industry.

At right, some of the many colorful cigar boxes that have held La Flor Dominicana cigars over the years.

Q: You had no background in this, your father didn’t make cigars, you didn’t have any family in the business . . .

A: At the time I had gold chains and I would wear Johnny Versace Medusa silk shirts. I was coming on the plane all the time to Santiago every week and other cigarmakers would look at me and say this guy doesn’t fit the profile of a cigarmaker. He looks more like a Mafia guy from Miami. (Laughs.) I went to buy wrapper one day from Daniel Núñez and I paid him in cash with $20 bills. (Laughs.) He was convinced I was from the underworld of Miami.

Q: Were you welcomed with open arms?

A: Not really. They were worried about me. And you know what? I understood why. The cigar industry is like a small family, so they were kind of worried about me. Then, time went by, and they just realized I was there working. Just trying to make a living. And slowly I have become friends with everybody. Almost a year after I started, that’s when cigarmaking went crazy. And lots of cigar factories started opening up. But I was like an old timer at that time. And I had my connection with my leaf supplier, Alfredo. What a guy. He helped me so much. I would go to him once a week and would pick up two bales of filler, one bale of binder and put it on my shoulder and in my old truck. And that was the tobacco for the week. And the following week I would go back and pick up more filler. The binder would last a little longer. That was the beginning. The first month, when I walked into his warehouse, it’s in the middle of the summer, a steamy day. The dust, and all these wrinkled leaves. That powerful smell of tobacco just fermenting—that day I just fell in love with it. It got under my skin. I said I want to be in this room forever. It took over my life. I fell in love with the leaves. That was a crucial moment for my life as a cigarmaker.

Q: What happened during the boom?

A: In the middle of the cigar boom I have 12 rollers. We’re making about 300,000 cigars a year at that time. And I couldn’t have one more pound of tobacco from my supplier. He would supply his older customers and he would supply me. He didn’t have more tobacco. He gave me what I could have. So, I spent the whole cigar boom with 12 rollers.

Q: Because you couldn’t get any more tobacco?

A: I couldn’t get any more tobacco.

Gomez inspecting fermenting cigar tobacco at his factory.

Q: Twelve rollers is not a lot of rollers.

A: It’s very small production. The rolling room at that time could hold 100 rollers, it was empty. But then there was a factory down the street from me that opened with 50 rollers. I said is there something I’m missing? There’s no good tobacco in the country. And they found tobacco that was raw, completely raw, and bad quality from bad areas, and started buying wrappers from Indonesia, and they didn’t ferment them. And they started making cigars with that.

Q: There were a lot of bad cigars rolled in those days.

A: We know the story. We’ve known each other for 30 years, we can tell the stories. When the boom ended, and consumption came down in 1998, I don’t know if it was because it was out of fashion, or people got turned off by bad cigars. There were a lot of bad cigars being made. I couldn’t get tempted—I had to stay with my production.

Q: How did you finally increase your production?

A: We actually started to grow [tobacco]. I purchased a farm in 1997.

Q: That was a surprise move—wasn’t it?

A: Yeah, especially for my wife. I found this farm, this piece of land, and I wanted to start farming tobacco. I was studying, traveling to Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua to see how the great farmers do it. I realized that to have consistency, we had to farm our own tobacco. So, I decided to go and find this piece of land. And purchase it. Once I gave the check and I paid for the land, I said, my wife is my wife, and I love her, but she’s also my partner. And she’s going to find out. I cannot hide this from her. I went back to Miami as usual that weekend and I take my wife to this great restaurant, this really beautiful place, to have this great dinner. And once we finished having dinner, I had this speech prepared for her. ‘Ines, what do you think if we start farming our own tobacco? Imagine what this will do for the future of the company.’ And I went on and on and on. And as I was talking I was becoming insecure, because she was not interrupting. And I’m thinking this is not going well. Once I finished my great speech, she goes ‘Litto, I think that’s a really bad idea.’ And that’s when I said ‘OK, shit. Well, Ines, I’m going to have to apologize but we already purchased a farm.’

Q: (Laughs.)

A: For a whole month, not only did she not want to have sex with me, she didn’t want to talk to me. (Smiles.) My dear wife, I’m just joking. (Laughs.) Time went by, and every time she would see the expenses of building up the farm and building the curing barns she would get even more pissed at me.

Q: Right—you bought a piece of land that you turned into a farm.

A: There was no infrastructure.

Q: You bought a dream. The expenses probably meant it was a big check.

A: Yes, yes it was. She was probably thinking about buying a bigger house or something. But you know what? You have a business and some money starts coming in. You buy a fancier car, you buy a bigger house or you make your company stronger. So, I thought make the company stronger was the answer. That’s a good use for that money.

A buncher at La Flor prepares filler leaves to be rolled inside a binder.

Q: Your production was locked in around 300,000 cigars or so, because of the limits on tobacco. I know that farm was a long-term thing. Once you started seeing the payoff, how much did your production increase?

A: A lot. A lot. We were able to make more cigars with tobacco that was the way I wanted it. That peace of mind was beautiful. Ines understood immediately. Shortly after, she realized that was the best decision we ever made for our company. It comes from the same land, the same seeds. It gives your cigars a personality, a certain profile that you will find in the cigars that we make. Whether you like them or not, it is there because it comes from that farm, it’s grown in a certain way, it’s cultivated in a certain way. We try to get more ligero, grow stronger tobacco. For that we do certain things—plant farther apart, less plants per square meter, less leaves per plant so nutrients go to a smaller number of leaves, and those leaves are more powerful. Those are the things that you do, that a normal farmer will not do, because it’s not commercially smart. A normal farmer wants more leaves, he doesn’t want less. Commercially you can’t do that, because it doesn’t make sense. But when you do it for yourself, that flexibility is what you get. And you get the personality that comes from that soil. It can only come from one place.

Q: Earlier you said when you started out you would pick up two bales of filler, a bale of binder and that would last you a week. How long does three bales of tobacco last you today?

A: My God, we have thousands of bales of tobacco today. A couple of hours.

Q: How many cigars are you making nowadays?

A: This year we will make 4.9 million. That, I never thought I’d be doing. I was saying I’ll make two million cigars and that’s it—I’m not going to make any more. But you grow a little bit every year, then there’s more demand, what we make is not enough to supply the market, so you have to do more. I didn’t know I could still manage things at the factory in a way that I feel comfortable—and I still do. There are more people in this department, more people in that department, I can still get in and see what they are doing. I’m still in control. And as long as I’m in control I can continue growing a little bit, in a way I’m comfortable with. And as long as I am like that I feel good about it.

A gathering area in the factory, surrounded by the rolling tables.

Q: Do you remember the first cigar that really put you on the map?

A: It was the 2000 Series. Cameroon wrapper. There were only two companies that had access to Cameroon wrapper, that was Arturo Fuente and General Cigar, and it was grown by Rick Meerapfel in Cameroon. Then this new company opened up and they started growing Cameroon in Cameroon, and I purchased the first crop from this company. The whole crop. It was not a big crop. The second one I couldn’t buy, because it was a much bigger crop. [The 2000 Series] was very highly rated by Cigar Aficionado. That took our company to a different level. It was so amazing. And then I became addicted to Cameroon wrapper—in a good way. It’s my favorite wrapper. I love all the tobaccos that we work with, but for my morning cigar it has to be Cameroon. It was so interesting, the evolution of growing slowly, being accepted in the market, being accepted in the trade, with your colleagues and your peers, then you realize how close this industry is. How competitors from different companies can spend time together just for fun, without being enemies. We just like being with each other.

Gomez is not only a cigarmaker, but a tobacco farmer as well as an accomplished horse rider.

Q: Why is that? You compete in the market, but when you get a group of cigar guys together, the cigars come out, the drinks are poured. It’s generally a friendship, for the most part. Why is this industry different?

A: I can tell you one thing: if everybody in the world would smoke cigars, there would be no wars. People that smoke cigars, they don’t fight with each other, they don’t insult each other. You see that with consumers, you see that with cigarmakers. And that’s a beautiful thing. We have a lot of respect for each other. Friends of mine get a No. 1 cigar of the year, I am happy for them, and I call them. It’s a beautiful industry. I’m blessed. I say ‘thank you, God’ every day for having the life that I have. I tell you, there is not a better feeling than [creating] something that somebody is going to actually buy and enjoy—I still can’t get over it. When I started, I would get so happy to see somebody smoking one of our cigars. Thirty years later, I still do. I go to events and see people who want to take pictures with me or want me to autograph a box. They don’t know that I want them to autograph my shirt. Because I’m happier to meet them smoking our cigars than they are meeting me. It’s the happiest thing that you can do. This is the reward. I don’t know what else I could be doing with my life, but there’s nothing better than this. I tell my kids: you’re going to run this company whenever I die, ’cause I’m not retiring. I’m in for the long run. I’ll get out of my office with my feet to the front.

Q: Not for a long time.

A: That’s how I’m going to go. It is a great thing. I enjoy this tremendously. I tell the rollers sometimes—you’re not just making cigars, you’re making a product that somebody is going to enjoy. And that guy pays your salary. I’m just the middle guy. So be proud of what you’re doing.

Source: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/a-conversation-with-litto-gomez

[zacca]

That’s a guy you want to sit down and drink with. Good stuff. 

[Hoosh]

Being able to have his business and not have to rely on others for much is great. His making of cigars is like a chef making dinner - much love going into the final product. 

Plus, they make some awesomely strong cigars. 🙂

[ElLoboLoco]

Met him at a cigar event few years back here in Charlotte, really nice guy.