Via David Savona,, at Cigar Aficionado:

Tobacco growers in the Dominican Republic are reporting an outstanding year in terms of overall yield.

A consistently sunny climate, cool nights and perfectly timed rain have combined for what some are calling the best crop in recent history.

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Interested in learning how to roll a cigar?

Then head on down to the historic Ybor City district of Tampa, Florida.

You’ll have a chance to learn everything you need to know in a Cigar Aficionado certification course that is used to train people to hand roll cigars for the tourist trade there. According to the Chamber of Commerce, three cigar shops and six cigar factories have opened for business in Ybor City in the last six months. Business is booming.

“Our cigar school is not just to create cigar rollers, but to create cigar rollers that know the rich history of Ybor City,” said Jacqueline Conley of International Bazaar, where classes are held.

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This is more of a tasting note and some quick comments (with price and source information), rather than a full review. Frankly, I do not feel comfortable doing reviews based on only a single cigar, and that’s all I have had of this one.

This came up in response to a question this weekend on the new Cigar Envy Deals and Discussion Yahoogroup. The group is up to over 375 members now in just four days of existence and ranks in the top ten of the 140 cigar-related groups there. Thanks again for the very enthusiastic response.

The factory pressed La Flor Dominicana (officially the LFD Prensado), for those who might not be familiar with it, was just introduced at the RTDA show in New Orleans a few months back. It is a new cigar in Litto Gomez’ Double Ligero series, and is offered in a very limited edition of only 400 boxes.

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Cigar Aficionado’s Cigar Insider newsletter just released a rating today on the Cusano 18 Paired Maduro Churchill. This is the cigar that I reviewed here at Cigar Envy last week. CA is the first of the major magazines to review it.

They rated the cigar at 89, and called it a best buy. It is their featured cigar, and received the highest rating of any reviewed in this issue — topping the CAO Cx2 and the Aurora 1495 among others.

Here are some excerpts from what they said, along with notes on their vertical review of other sizes in the Paired Maduro release:

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There’s an interesting article up at the Cigar Aficionado website on one of the seminars at the Big Smoke Las Vegas event the weekend before last. I makes me wish I’d re-arranged my schedule and gone to this one.

Cigar Aficionado’s European editor, James Suckling, gave a seminar on Saturday morning entitled “Collecting Cuban Cigars.” James was joined by Thomas Bohrer, of Habanos Wine and Cigars in Hong Kong, and Frank Nisenboim, a cigar collector from Chicago, in a panel presentation.

The article has some highlights from things discussed, included guidelines for storing and properly aging classic cigars, background on cigar auctions at Christie’s, and — most important of all — how to know whether or not a cigar will benefit from aging. They also gave guidelines on which cigars are good investments for budding collectors, as well as talking about current prices. Prices of good investments, by the way, range from a low of around U.S. $100.00 per stick up to thousands of dollars for some of the most sought after brands.

Even if you don’t operate in the rarified financial atmosphere of these collectors, there are tips in the article that will benefit your regular cigar collection. I recommend it as a good read as well as a good source of information.