From left, Gordon Mott, Litto Gomez, Edgar Cullman Jr., Hendrik Kelner and George Brightman.

The hot new cigars segment focused on cigars made with Dominican wrappers, which only seven years ago were unheard of in the premium cigar market. Three cigarmakers took to the podium, and each has -- or will soon have -- a Dominican-wrapped cigar on sale: Edgar Cullman Jr. of General Cigar, Hendrik Kelner of Cigars Davidoff and Litto Gomez of La Flor Dominicana.

Cullman explained how the wrapper for his company's Ramon Allones cigar is grown in Jima, a town outside of Santiago. "It's a very difficult process," he said. "You can get 100 pounds of tobacco from your field, and depending upon where you grow it, 70 percent of your yield might be wrapper, or 10 percent might be wrapper." Difficulties in acquiring sufficient quantities of tobacco is one of the reasons limiting Ramon Allones production. At this early stage, he said, General had only enough leaf to make about 500,000 of the cigars. "We're experimenting," he said. "I, quite frankly, still think there is tremendous potential in the Dominican Republic."

Litto Gomez tending tobacco on his Dominican tobacco farm, from the pages of Cigar Aficionado. Photo by Jim Daniels.

Kelner said he started growing wrapper tobacco in 1980 in the Dominican Republic, but with little success. "We made some mistakes," he said. But now his wrapper leaf is appearing on the Davidoff Special. Despite the finished project, he seemed less than happy with working with the plants, grown from corojo seed. "Corojo is one of the best wrappers, in terms of flavor, but it has problems," he said. "This may be the first and last [Davidoff] with this type of seed. The yield is low."

Low yields aren't enticing to Kelner. "The only country that can continue to grow wrapper with 10 percent yield is Cuba, because [the fields are] owned by the government," he said. "A private company would go bankrupt."

Gomez showed his passion for growing wrapper, a new endeavor for the cigarmaker. "There was always one objective in my mind -- learn as much as possible about all aspects of growing wrapper," he said. "It's a beautiful thing."

Gomez explained how he grew two seed varieties to get his wrapper, which won't appear in the market for more than a year, and brought down the house as he explained their origins. "One seed came from a friend in Nicaragua," he said. "The other is corojo, and it came from…a secret place."