The Bull Goes Dark: La Flor Dominicana Marks Ten Years of the Andalusian Bull
A decade after the original figurado became one of the most coveted cigars in the world, Litto Gomez returns to the 2016 La Canela harvest for a broadleaf-wrapped anniversary edition limited to 5,000 boxes.
La Flor Dominicana will begin shipping the Andalusian Bull 10th Anniversary Maduro to retailers on October 7, the company announced from Coral Gables, Florida, on October 6. The release marks ten years since the debut of the Andalusian Bull, the figurado that became the company’s most sought-after cigar. It is the same shape in a darker dress: the 6 1/2 by 52/64 perfecto now wears a Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro wrapper, and the binder and filler come from the estate’s 2016 La Canela crop.
The original Bull proved that a shape could be a brand.
Production is limited to 5,000 ten-count boxes, 50,000 cigars in all. The suggested price is 35 dollars per cigar, 350 dollars per box. The cigars are rolled at Tabacalera La Flor S.A.
The mold in Andalusia
The original Andalusian Bull dates to 2016, when it debuted in June and went on to be named Cigar Aficionado’s Cigar of the Year. Its origin is one of the better stories in modern cigar making. On a trip to southern Spain, Litto Gomez found a worn-down cigar mold with an unusual shape. He brought it home, the company replicated it, and a new brand was built around the form. His son Tony Gomez, thinking about where the mold was found, proposed the name: Andalusian Bull, for the bullfighting tradition of Andalusia, the region of southern Spain where Litto Gomez was born.
The shape is the point. The Andalusian Bull is a 6 1/2-inch figurado that swells to a 64 ring gauge at its widest, tapering at the head with a bulbous foot in the manner of a salomon. The original wore an Ecuadorian Corojo wrapper. Ten years later it remains one of the hardest cigars in the LFD portfolio to find.
What the anniversary changes
The anniversary edition keeps the shape and rebuilds the blend around age. The binder and filler are Dominican tobaccos grown on La Flor Dominicana’s La Canela farm from the 2016 harvest, the same year the original cigar was introduced, fermented and aged for a decade. Cigar Aficionado’s reporting adds detail: the blend includes a binder and a Pelo de Oro-seed filler component from that 2016 crop. The wrapper is the visible change, a dark Connecticut Broadleaf from the Connecticut River Valley in place of the original Ecuadorian leaf. The company describes the result as a sweeter, richer, and darker Andalusian Bull.
The packaging is new as well: green and gold, with a lid that opens in a diamond pattern, a deliberate break from the original presentation. Litto Gomez, in the company’s announcement, kept it simple: the anniversary cigar had to be an Andalusian Bull, only darker and sweeter, and his hope is that smokers love it as much as the original.
The apparatus of an anniversary
LFD spent the month before the announcement teasing the release, including a film the company produced about the original cigar. Retailers have also been shown a new Andalusian Bull ashtray, circular this time rather than oval, carrying the line’s matador in green and gold. Anniversaries in the cigar business are marketing, but they are also inventory discipline: 50,000 cigars, one harvest year on the inside, and no more.
The wrapper choice is not a whim. La Flor Dominicana has built much of its reputation on Connecticut Broadleaf, and the company frames the anniversary cigar as a tribute to that long relationship: a Maduro Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper honoring what it calls its longtime love for the leaf and its mastery of maduro. The original Bull proved that a shape could be a brand.
The anniversary proves that a brand can revisit its own beginning without repeating it. Whether the broadleaf version earns its own decade will be decided the usual way, in humidors and on the secondary market, where the original still commands attention.
