Handmade Dominican Cigars

The Dominican Republic rolls more premium cigars than anywhere on earth—about 196 million a year, shipped to 148 countries. Almost none of that has anything to do with this.

A friend of ours grows tobacco in the hills behind Buen Hombre. He grows it, he cures it, and he rolls the cigars himself, by hand, one at a time. There is no factory involved, no brand on a band, no box with a Dominican name printed on it by a company headquartered somewhere else. Same man, same hands, from the seed to the thing you are holding.

And he does not sell them. Not to shops, not to the resorts, not online. He rolls them for us, and we keep them for our guests — which means the only way to get one is to be standing in Buen Hombre or Cabarete and ask.

That is not a marketing device. It is simply how much one man can grow and roll in a year, and it's why this is a treat rather than a product.

So: a cigar from the hills you have been looking at all week, made by someone the team has known for years, for six dollars — roughly what the airport charges for a cigar that traveled much farther and was touched by many more people.

Sit down after dinner with one, and you will understand why we keep them behind the counter.