Last month, Brooks Whittington and I were invited to visit Davidoff’s expansive operations in the Dominican Republic as part of the company’s semi-regular trips for retailers. It was a week in the Dominican Republic spent learning not only about how Davidoff cigars are produced, but how the company thinks as part of its “crop-to-shop” philosophy. Klaas Peter Kelner, son of Henke Kelner, led our tour. While the week might have ended with beaches and golf carts in Casa de Campo at the southeastern part of the island, it started in tobacco fields in the northwest. Specifically, the fields Davidoff uses in Jicomé. While our day might have began there, it’s not exactly where Davidoff cigars begin. They start at Procesadora de Tabaco Palmerajo (PTP). It’s a subsidiary of the Davidoff-owned Tabadom Holdings, Inc., the parent of the Swiss company’s Dominican operations. PTP finances and oversees the growing of tobacco, purchases the tobacco from the contracted farmers and then processes the tobacco before selling it to one of Davidoff’s three factories in Villa Gonzáles: Cidav Corp, Inc. (Cigars Davidoff), OK Cigar Corp, Inc. or Occidental Cigar Corp, Inc. Tobacco plant seedlings are kept stable until they have the root system in place ...
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