La Flor Dominicana’s Gourmet Smoke Sessions is back for a sophomore season, known as Tour Del Mundo, Spanish for world tour.

The first Gourmet Smoke Sessions event series featured 16 events that combined cigars and food. Jon Carney served two roles during the events; first, he is the vp of sales for La Flor Dominicana, but he also leaned on his hospitality background to create the food options through his company, Hacking Gourmet.

Now the program is back for a second season that will feature a similar concept. The events will still be centered around food, however, every event during season two will feature a minimum of five courses of food, each made to be prepared with a cigar. In season one, the events’ menus were not a minimum of five courses and were centered around how to prepare specific dishes, the cooking demonstrations will not be held during season two events.

Like the first season, Meat N’ Bone, a Miami-based butcher, will provide the food for the events.

There will be a total of 20 events for season two, the first one took place yesterday with Rocky’s Cigars of Syracuse, N.Y. and was hosted at Lock 1 Distillery in Phoenix, N.Y. and the program will run through Spring 2023.

Only one of the events will be an entirely virtual affair. On July 4, Fox Cigar Bar of Scottsdale will host a special July 4th event that will feature the 2022 versions of the La Flor Dominicana Stars and Stripes. That show will also feature a broadcast of fireworks. The other 19 events will all be held in-person, though some of them will also be broadcast online for virtual attendees.

While the series is Spanish for world tour, all of the events will take place in the U.S. The meaning is probably better interpreted as tour of the world. Each of the five food courses are made to be paired with a specific cigar, each using a wrapper from a different country. For season two, there’s a sampler that will be offered at every event to conduct the pairing. Inside is:

La Flor Dominicana is offering the sampler in either five- or 10-count options. The five-count sampler features one of each cigar, the 10-count sampler features two of each cigar. The company says this is the first time the Litto Gomez Diez Lusitano has been offered for sale since 2015.

Some, but not all, of the events will feature exclusive cigars. Yesterday’s event featured the La Flor Dominicana RC 37 which used an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper with a Sumatra maduro barberpole stripe and a Candela “R” for Rocky’s. That cigar was made to honor Rocky’s Cigar’s 37th anniversary.

Tomorrow, the second event will take place at Anstead’s Tobacco Co. in Fayetteville, N.C. and will feature the La Flor Dominicana Gourmet Smoke Session Paradiso, a 5 3/4 x 54 robusto extra that uses a Ecuadorian Sumatra obscure wrapper with Connecticut barberpole accents and an image of a palm tree made with candela tobacco. That’s a reference to the retirement of Wayne Anstead of Anstead’s.

Tickets for the events will vary from event-to-event but should range between $100-150, which includes a five-count sampler and additional samplers can be purchased and have an MSRP of $70 (five-count) or $140 (10-count). La Flor Dominicana has not announced the dates and locations of the full slate of events.

Patrick Lagreid contributed to this story.

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.