La Flor Dominicana Previews Factory Press III

Gregory Mottola
Posted: September 26, 2008

A small group of cigar enthusiasts were among the first to taste La Flor Dominicana's Factory Press III cigar at the pre-release dinner Tuesday evening. The event was hosted by Smoke Signals Tobacconist, and held at Pace's Steak House, both in the seaside town of Port Jefferson on Long Island, New York.

The dinner included a course-by-course tasting of La Flor Dominicana cigars and concluded with the unveiling of the Factory Press III, a large, sharply trunk-pressed 6 1/4 inch by 58 ring gauge cigar covered in a dark, oily Connecticut-broadleaf wrapper.

In addition to the broadleaf wrapper, the new release also distinguishes itself with its Nicaraguan binder. (Previous releases of Factory Press were made with Dominican binders.) The Nicaraguan tobacco was introduced to give the cigar a new strength and to vary the tasting profile from the last release. The filler tobacco comes from Gomez's La Canela farm in the Dominican Republic.

The Factory Press I debuted in 2005 as an ultra-hefty 6 1/2 by 60 squared-off cigar. When customer feedback requested the same concept in a smaller size, brand creator Litto Gomez released the Factory Press II, scaling it down to 6 1/4 by 54. But this generated a new clamor to restore the cigar to its original size, so Gomez compromised, making Factory Press III larger than its predecessor, but slightly smaller than the original.

Factory Press III will start shipping to cigar shops in October carrying a suggested retail price of $12.50 per stick. It will come in large cabinets of 120, each containing 10 slotted trays of 12 trunk-pressed cigars. Only 300 boxes of the Factory Press III were made.