Why? *PIC*
Only La Aurora and the products of Consolidated (Tabacalera Garcia), and to a lesser extent Davidoff, are marketed here in limited fashion, as well as in the US and around the world.
In some cases-for example there seems to be a good supply of Dunhill, Don Diego, Montecristo and all the La Aurora cigars at the local supermarket's humidor. In others, the cigars are at the cigar shops at the tourist locales. Actually, I just heard that the Pola Supermarket chain will be limiting their offerings.
At some shops they swear that they have Cuban cigars, but 99% of the time and probably 100% of the time they are fakes. There is a Casa de los Habanos in Santo Domingo which offers a pretty fair selection of cigars that are authentic.
Now the reason for this lack of comercialization of locally produced cigars is that in a lot of cases the manufacturers are not the owners of the brand name or of the distribution rights. This means, for example that Macanudos , while manufactured in a General Cigar/Swedish Match facility in Santiago, is marketed throughout the world,but, by corporate decision, not in the DR.
Brands like Fittipaldi, Licenciados, Rey de los Reyes, Fonseca, Swisher and others are owned or controlled by distributors in the States and they don't have an interest in selling here.
Finally, there are some other houses like Flor Dominicana that have just one distributor in the DR and he loves to inflate the prices. BUT, you can find excelent cigars at very good prices if you know where to look...{:>))===~~
