La Flor Dominicana Andalusian Bull Review

2026-08-25  Hand-Me-One · 2/4 My Money · by Eric

Filed under: Vacation Buys · Corojo · Dominican Republic · Ecuador · Figurados · The Ash · Retrohale · Bitter Cigar?

Verdict: Hand-Me-One (2/4). The best-constructed cigar I've ever had in my hand, wrapped around a flavor profile that had me watching the clock for the last hour... and at $25 a stick, construction alone can't carry that.

Some background, because this one carries real hype: the Andalusian Bull was Cigar Aficionado's #1 Cigar of the Year in 2016, the first LFD to ever take the top spot. Litto Gomez based the shape on a vintage cigar mold he picked up in Belgium and named it as a nod to his Spanish roots. The cool thing is that LFD never ramped up production to chase the award... they kept making them in the same limited numbers, which is why people still hunt these almost a decade later.

The Setup

• Cigar: La Flor Dominicana Andalusian Bull, 6.5 x 64 figurado. Corojo-seed Ecuadorian wrapper over Dominican binder and filler (Criollo '98 with a touch of Pelo de Oro). Tabacalera La Flor, Dominican Republic.
• Street price: ~$25 for a single when you can find one. Boxes of 10 run a little over $200 online, and most listings sit at "out of stock."
• What I paid: $25 a stick, my money, four total... and getting four took three stops. My local B&M had a one-per-day limit, so that was two trips for two. A shop I walked into while traveling had two left, one split all to pieces, so I bought the good one... then grabbed one more on the drive back through. This was my first one ever.
• Storage: main humidor at 69% RH, about 3-4 months of rest.
• When/where: back deck, lit up around 7:20 in the evening. 78°F, feels-like 81, 57% humidity.
• Food beforehand: baked chicken with light seasoning, mashed potatoes, and corn with a San Pellegrino, about an hour before.
• First cigar of the day, paired with water.

Light Up and First Third

Cold inspection first: nice light brown wrapper, a little light veining, everything clean, well-packed foot. The Xikar XO took the cap off with a clean, easy cut, and the cold draw showed a mild sweetness with just about perfect airflow. Toasted it slow with the Guevara Lux single torch.

Right on the light I got a nice whole wheat toast note. From there the first third settled into something I spent the whole evening trying to name: bready, with a wet tea leaf flavor... not tea the drink, the leaf itself... carrying a light bitterness with it. Behind that sat a light baking spice, a tobacco sweetness that lingers, and real creaminess on the palate even without retrohaling.

Here's the strange part. This cigar cared how I drew on it. A single draw blown out of the mouth put that bitter wet tea leaf note right up front; two draws flipped it to mostly cream and cashew with the bitterness pushed way back. That's backwards from every cigar I know, and it stayed that way most of the night. One draw in the first third was a whole lot of bitterness and nothing else... not enjoyable, and an early warning of where the back half was headed.

On the retro the baking spice dropped out fast, leaving sweet cream and light cashew... by the end of the first third it was all lightly roasted cashew and sweet cream, with leather joining the cream and just hanging out between draws. A light minerality showed up about a half inch in.

The burn ran a little wavy early but corrected itself with the slow side rotated to the bottom. The ash was the story: very tight, basically no flyers, stacking like dimes.

I went into this cigar blind on purpose... didn't look up a thing, just knew people hunt them. And through the first third I was enjoying it: light and creamy, very mild in strength, flavors middle-of-the-road in intensity... not jumping out, not buried either. It reads like a good Connecticut-shade cigar, sweet and creamy with that familiar Connecticut-style bitterness sitting on the palate... except it isn't one. It's a Corojo wrapper doing a Connecticut impression.

Second Third

Right after the first ash, that bittery wet tea leaf flavor moved front and center with some light cream behind it and a lot of minerality on the finish. The retro picked up white pepper, leather, creaminess, light nuttiness, then some very light roasted black coffee and a definite woodiness. Non-food flavors always throw me... I'm sitting there running through foods and it takes a while to land on "that's wood."

The pattern from the first third hardened into the rule of the night: the retro was where this cigar lived. Retro: light white pepper spice, cream, roasted cashews, leather... a creamy leather that hangs out on the palate between draws. Very pleasant. Blowing the draw out of the mouth: a bitter nutty cream with a lot of leather and some light roasted coffee behind it, and that bitterness taking over the palate and lingering.

I pulled the band off around a quarter inch out, and both bands came off completely clean, no issues at all. Which fits, because construction stayed phenomenal... ash stacking tight, smoke output excellent whether I drew once or twice, burn slightly crooked but never enough to touch up.

And this is where I started asking the question I never really stopped asking: why is there so much hype around this cigar? If it didn't have that bitterness it'd be a really nice, mild, creamy smoke. But the bitterness showed up consistently, and by the back half of this third the flavor had gone static. When you spend $25 on a cigar and catch yourself wondering how much is left, that's not where you want to be. Near the end of this third I got called inside for a few minutes to help wrangle a couch, and it was a fun little break... and being grateful for a distraction from your cigar tells you everything about how the flavor was going.

Final Third

The break cost me a relight, which isn't the cigar's fault, and the burn line off the relight came back great. The flavor didn't. First note on the fresh light: bitter wet tea leaves, primary and unmissable.

Then the retro changed for real: black pepper, ramped way up, with cream behind it, transitioning into roasted nuttiness, heavy leather, and a long creamy-leather finish with some lingering bitterness. There was also a tannin on the tongue like a dry wine... the feel of it without the actual drying, because this cigar never dried my palate once all night. Back near the end of the first third I'd realized I hadn't even taken a sip of my water yet.

Past that, it was the same profile on repeat: bitterness sitting around the whole perimeter of the tongue and somehow the roof of the mouth, leather, medium black coffee, some real earthiness late, minerality on both sides of the tongue, a hint of cream way in the background. One-dimensional is the word. The only genuine transition the entire cigar made was strength: it crept from mild at the start to close to full by the end without ever announcing itself... I only noticed when I stopped and took stock.

I put it down with about a half inch still left, right around the two-hour mark, because I was looking at the clock asking when it would be over. It could have kept going. I couldn't.

Construction

• Wrapper: noticeably smooth in the hand, no tooth at all... smoother than most, maybe all, of the cigars I've held. Light veining, clean, at least a double cap.
• Draw: basically perfect start to finish.
• Burn: wavy here and there but self-correcting with rotation. One touch-up (that unburned finger after the first ash) and one relight, which was my fault for stepping inside, not the cigar's.
• Ash: may be the best ash construction on any cigar I've ever smoked. Super tight, no flyers, stacks like dimes, came off completely clean every single time with a nice point.
• Smoke output: better than average the entire smoke... never needed a second draw to produce.
• Band: both bands came off completely clean, no issues at all.

Bottom Line

This is a phenomenally built cigar with a boring blend in it. Everything I can measure with my eyes and hands... draw, burn, ash, smoke, wrapper... is as good as I've seen at any price. And everything I actually smoke a cigar for went flat by the midpoint: a mild, creamy, Connecticut-tasting profile with a bitter wet-tea-leaf note that kept taking the wheel, and a final ninety minutes that barely moved. The retro was legitimately good all night, white pepper turning to black pepper over cream, cashew, coffee, and leather... but a cigar can't ask me to retrohale every draw for two hours to stay interested. I care about flavor first, then draw, then burn and construction. This one has the last three locked up and only sometimes shows up with the first, and at $25 there are a lot of cigars I'd rank ahead of it for substantially less money. They won't stack ash like this. I can live with that.

Would I smoke it again? Hand-Me-One (2/4). If someone hands me one, I won't turn it down... but I wouldn't buy more for myself, and I certainly won't hunt them. Cheaper, this math changes: at $13-15 it'd probably flirt with a five-pack. But verdicts here get judged at street, and street is $25. I have three left, and more than likely they're getting gifted to friends who want to try a Cigar of the Year winner... that's a better use for them than my ashtray.

Best for: checking the 2016 #1 Cigar of the Year off your list, or a long conversation smoke where you want a cigar that needs zero babysitting and looks great doing it. Water pairing is all it needs... nothing about it will fight a drink, either.

My rating scale, one question only... would I spend my own money on this again? 4 Box Buy (box on hand, always) / 3 Five-Pack (yes, a few live in the humidor) / 2 Hand-Me-One (wouldn't buy it, wouldn't turn one down) / 1 Not Even Free (I'd rather smoke nothing).

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