Very rarely seen without his signature hat, Litto Gomez of La Flor Dominicana embodies everything there is to love about tobacco, and the history of his brand is as interesting as he is. 

After being robbed while working as a jewelry maker in 1993, Litto Gomez went to work in the cigar business with a small company named Los Libertadores in the Dominican Republic.

Litto Gomez

Unfortunately, there was a falling out with the partners in the business, and Gomez left in 1996 to start his own company with his wife, Ines Lorenzo-Gomez, La Flor Dominicana. Starting out with only five rollers producing about 150,000 cigars a year, the companies output was more than 3 million by 1997 and is now well past that mark.

Polite to a fault, extremely good natured and almost always smiling, Litto Gomez is more than willing to talk for extended periods of time about tobacco in general, or the Dominican Republic in detail. 

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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.