A La Flor Dominicana Event and La Palina Numbers Series

Wednesday I went to a La Flor Dominicana event at my local CigarCigars shop in Frazer, PA, which featured Litto Gomez, along with our area rep, Kyle Shackleton. It was a casual meet and greet without the usual presentation which Kyle does a great job with, but Litto just hung out with the crowd, and the turn out was quite good for a Wednesday afternoon. This shop is odd, in that it has early hours, opening at 6am and closing at 7pm, and often has events early on weekday afternoons, and they seem to do well with his schedule, and this event was very well attended and they sold a lot of LFD product. There were many people there who I’ve seen at surrounding CigarCigars stores, including several of the store managers and employees. Litto doesn’t make a lot of store appearances, it was special to have him visit our little corner of the world. This shop is only about 2 miles from my house, so it was super-convenient! I spoke to him briefly at the end of the event for an upcoming CigarCraig Podcast episode, so watch for that later this week.  While I was there I smoked a LFD Ligero Natural L-400.  This is a 6″ x 54 toro that I really enjoyed for the first half of the event.  It’s not the power-house that the Double Ligero is, but it’s no light-weight either. It has an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper that is flawless, as was the burn and draw, and it was a pleasure to smoke. I picked up another to smoke when I could really pay attention to it. I followed that with the LFD TAA cigar, wich was the freebie with the “buy 4, get one” promo, which I’ve had before and is a perfectly good cigar. I also picked up the TAA maduro, and ended up with one of the old event only cigars which I remember to be an incredible cigar. Like I said, it was a well attended event, the company was great, the selection was great, food from my favorite local Italian restaurant was great, if it hadn’t rained cats and dogs it would have been perfect! Fortunately the event was inside!

Of course, I was inspired to keep the La Flor Dominicana think going Thursday for my evening walk with a LFD Double Ligero Chisel Maduro that I had picked up at the last event I attended. These are amazing cigars. They have actually patented the shape of this cigar, so any other cigar you see with this shape is in violation of the trademark! I use the technique Litto himself taught me several years ago when I asked him how he preferred to cut these, and he said to just give it a squeeze to pop the cap and peel the cap away, works like a charm. None of the silly punching one side or both or anything, just a squeeze and you’re ready to go. Maybe once in a while a bite sideways to open it up a little, but otherwise it’s all good. It’s also my finding that this method really slows the smoking time down considerably, with no loss of satisfaction. I routinely get a good 2½ hours from a 6″ x 54 figurado, making it an exceptional value if you have the time to commit. Great heavy flavors of espresso and spice.  This has been a favorite of mine for many years.

Friday evening we went to the BB&T Pavilion in Camden, NJ (across the river from Philadelphia) to see David Byrne of Talking Heads fame. It was part of a local college radio station festival, and I wasn’t awfully impressed with the first four acts, and even less impressed with the heavy rains we sat through during those acts (a down side of lawn seats, free tickets, can’t complain). The upside is that smoking is allowed in the lawn seating area! I smoked a lovely La Palina Number Series 01 before the torrential rains, which was pretty a darned nice cigar.  Like the LFD L-400, this also has an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper, but it has a binder from Costa Rica and Honduran and Nicaraguan fillers, and is made in Placsencia’s Honduran El Paraiso factory.  The example I smoked was a 5½” x 50 robusto, which is a nice size, and only a few people sat down nearby, realized I was smoking a cigar, then moved away. It’s not like people weren’t smoking other stuff…anyway, this cigar has a little of the sourdough bread flavor that I know at least one of my readers digs, and I’ve grown a bit of an affinity for, with some earthiness, quite an enjoyable smoke. Of course, being able to enjoy a cigar and listen to live music isn’t a bad thing. Fortunately, we brought umbrellas and tarps, so we rode the storm out, and it was worth the wait, because David Byrne put on a spectacular show, very unique and entertaining. If you ever liked a Talking Heads song and you get a chance to see one of his shows, I highly recommend it. Heck, look it up on YouTube for a taste.

Between sets, after the rain, I smoked one of those little Undercrown Coronets from the tins, and while it was good, it really underscored to me why I don’t care for little cigars. This is a personal thing, and maybe it’s because I’m a reformed cigarette smoker, but I didn’t need that cigar. I felt like it was something I smoked to pass the time, and when I smoke a cigar, I smoke it to relax and I really want to spend an hour or so with he cigar. Like I said, these are fine if you need a fix, I’m not casting aspersions, it just reminds me of when I needed a cigarette at prescribed times and got antsy if I couldn’t do it. I can separate that now, but I got an uncomfortable feeling smoking that little cigar. Perhaps it’s just my current life situation and not wanting stress to push me down any roads I don’t want to go back down…

Anyway, of course, I had to smoke the La Palina Number Series No. 02 Last night. This one has a Costa Rican Maduro wrapper over a Honduran binder and Nicaraguan and Honduran fillers, also made at El Paraiso in Honduras. The Robusto in this one is (unfortunately, in my opinion) a half n inch shorter at 5″ x 52, not sure what went into that decision. For me, that half an inch might represent another twenty minutes of smoking time! When I smoked these two cigars before, I came to the same conclusion, and that was that while I likes the No. 01 well enough, the No. 02 was the cigar that was right in my wheelhouse! This guy has semi sweet chocolate, dark roast coffee, an all around tasty treat. People don’t like the bands and packaging on these, they don’t bother me. Sure, I like the traditional look of the Family series and the Black, Red, Bronze, etc. Labels series, but  I actually prefer these over the Classic series bands which I find to be just blah. I think La Palina has something for every taste, whether it’s flavor or aesthetic.

That’s enough for today, off to work on a could projects around the house, have a podcast to put together and cigars to smoke!  Until the next time,

CigarCraig