If you've been with us long enough you know by now the huge difference between smoking blind and smoking a cigar from a brand you already know. Blind tasting's are an essential piece of learning the craft and discovering the cigars you truly love, not the one's they tell you to love. This month we wanted to experiment with taking your blind tasting experience a bit further. Smoking one brand's cigars can be a bit misleading, because if they aren't producing their own cigars (most aren't), then often they are using multiple factories for their cigars, resulting in a totally different experience from one of their lines to another. So we thought, what if instead of smoking one cigar from the company's porfolio, we blind smoked a cigar from the factory themselves? This would give us a much better representation of 

It's our pleasure to introduce you to Hostos Fernandez of Tabacalera La Isla. Hostos is only 38 years old, and has only owned his factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic, for a couple years, but coming from a cigar family he has over 25 years of cigar producing experience. This includes over twenty years working with his uncle, legendary cigar man Manolo Quesada of Quesada Cigars, whose tobacco lineage goes back to the 1800s. 

He launched his factory in 2020, saying, "I just thought it was time to take a swing. I don't want to turn 60 without having done this. It's now or never."

Of the cigar he blended for Standard & Twain (#148), he said, "We believe it's a very tasty cigar. We were very intersted when we came up with the blend because it has a lot of sweetness to it but at the same time has some strength that will not overpower it too much so you can taste the nuance of flavors." 

Along with being an expert cigar maker, Hostos (as you'll no doubt see in his video) is a great guy and very enjoyable to work with. If you enjoy this smoke, you'll want to seek out the other brands coming from Tabacalera La Isla, which include highly acclaimed smokes like Matilde (Limited Exposure Series), Warped (Chinchalle + Companion de Warped), and La Sirena (Mexican Mermaid). 

Let us know what you think about the Factory Reveal - it was our pleasure to introduce  you to Hostos and his team at Tabacalera La Isla!