| Dominican Style |
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Page 1 of 5 Nothing makes these men happier than to see their best efforts go up in smoke The leisure-time pursuits of cigarmaker Luis Tomás Méndez—auto racer, cyclist, waterskier—present him as a man of competing urges. In fact, he suffers from just one addiction: He’s an adrenaline junkie, not a nicotine fiend. On a recent moonlit evening, after bombing down a nearby mountain on his bike, Méndez reclined with a cigar in his villa in the hills of Santiago, Dominican Republic, wispy white spirals trailing from his mouth. At 44, Méndez has the extended sideburns of a SoHo hipster and the sinewy physique of a triathlete. His need for speed propels him toward competitive road cycling (he’s the reigning Dominican national champion in his age group) and the even faster pastime of car racing, in which he pilots his Jaguar XK8 at upwards of 200 miles per hour.  SANTIAGO > Tucked between the Cordillera Central and Septentrional Mountains, the Cibao Valley has long been the center of Dominican Republic tobacco. Tequia Experiences offers two cigar tours of the region. > The Chateau de la Fuente tour leads you through the Fuente famil... And a business. As the man behind La Caya, a young brand of premium Dominican cigars, Méndez has emerged as a vigorous player in an industry transformed by a shift in power. Long overshadowed by their Cuban counterparts, Dominican cigars have risen to rank among the world’s most celebrated smokes. Benefiting not only from the continuing Castro-era embargo but also from climate and soil conditions similar to Cuba’s mythic tobacco-growing valleys, the Dominican Republic today produces more cigars than any other Caribbean country and accounts for 55 percent of cigar imports in the United States. This past year, the DR dispatched 330 million cigars to the American market, up 6.5 percent from 2006. And over the past five years, premium cigar imports to the U.S. have increased by about 5 percent. The dominance isn’t just a matter of numbers. In the view of many aficionados, not to mention in the results of prestigious blind tastings, Dominican cigars frequently surpass their storied Cuban rivals. “It took some time, but Dominican cigar masters today have brought the industry to full maturity,” says James Plavoukos, general manager of Club Macanudo, an aficionado’s haven in Manhattan. “In terms of quality and consistency, there’s really not much question that Dominicans today are number one.” |
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