Wednesday evening I went to my former hometown of Downingtown, PA (beer lovers may know this is as the home of Victory Brewery, which used to allow cigars at their brew pub, I miss that! They had a great root beer too) to the CigarCigars store there for a La Flor Dominicana event. The store is fairly new, it’s only been open there a few years, and is one of twelve (soon to be thirteen) stores in the chain which recently joined the Tobacconists Association of America (TAA), which you read about here a few weeks ago. This shop has greatly improved under 
the direction of the store manager, Kevin. I think once they put a drop ceiling in the lounge, which is a re-purposed garage bay, the acoustics will be much better and it will have a more intimate feel. Otherwise, the selection is good, although when there is an event I pretty much focus on the brand doing the event. I started off with a La Flor Dominicana Airbender Maduro Chisel, which has an Ecuador Habano Maduro wrapper and fillers grown on their La Canela farm. It’s in the patented Chisel shape, which is a torpedo with a flattened head, measuring 6″ x 54. The fun thing about this shape is that you don’t need a cutter! Squeezing the head makes the cap pop right off, which Lito Gomez himself showed me several years ago when I asked him what his preferred cut was on this vitola. The Airbender Chisel burned for an astounding two hours.
Kyle Shackelton is our local LFD rep, and does an excellent presentation over a video showing the cigar making process, this time in reverse, from cigar to seed. He explains a lot of the processes in detail, but not so much as to overwhelm his audience. Many consumers don’t understand the extent of the time and care that goes into the cigars we love. A picture of the aging room at the factory blew me away, they had cabinets with all the wheels stored inside, many aging rooms I’ve seen just have shelves. Their facility in the DR is beautiful, one day maybe I’ll visit.
Here’s where I goofed up, or somebody did! I bought a TAA exclusive La Flor Dominicana, and the “Buy x, get one” special cigar was banded exactly the same, with the TAA secondary band. I smoked one of them, not sure which, but while it started out a little woodier than I like, it developed into a very nice smoke. I didn’t find it as rich as the Airbender Maduro, but it was good. The former event exclusive cigar they had was fantastic, I have one someplace…anyway, it was a great event, Kevin and his staff at CigarCigars Downingtown were excellent hosts, and Kyle put on a good tutorial. Catch an LFD event if you can, I don’t know if all the reps do events as good as Kyle does, but I wouldn’t be surprised! Let me know if you’ve experienced these in other markets.
That’s all for now, until the next time,
CigarCraig
</a
