La Aurora Cigars has a rich history as one of the oldest continuously operating cigar brands in the world. From humble beginnings, La Aurora has grown to an immense size with a presence on five continents and over 1,000 employees. It all started in 1903 with the brand’s founder, Eduardo León Jimenes, and a lofty goal.

When La Aurora was founded over 120 years ago, the Dominican Republic was not the cigar-making epicenter it is today. Instead, tobacco farmers would ship their crops to Cuba and the United States to be rolled into cigars. But Eduardo León Jimenes, a 3^rd generation tobacco grower, had different, bigger ideas.

With a dream to build a global cigar brand, Jimenes founded La Aurora in 1903 at the ripe young age of 18 with the help of six cigar rollers and a donkey to transport tobacco. Today, La Aurora Cigars is famous for being the Dominican Republic’s oldest maker of fine handmade premium cigars.

Although he would not live to see his dream come true, his son, Fernando León Asensio, and grandson, Guillermo León Herbert, carried on Eduardo’s dream and ensured it became a reality. In fact, La Aurora Cigars is still owned by the León family, with Guillermo León Herbert running the show. The story of how La Aurora grew to such immense success is quite the tale.

La Aurora started in Guazumal, located near the modern cigar capital of the Dominican Republic, Tamboril. The small La Aurora factory made perfecto-shaped cigars called Preferidos, which taper to a point at both the foot and the cap, quickly becoming popular throughout the island country.

To keep up with demand, La Aurora would move its production to Santiago De Los Caballeros, the second-largest city in the Dominican Republic. The factory they moved to in Santiago is still displayed on La Aurora bands and boxes to this day.

La Aurora was also reorganized into E—León Jimenes C. por A. to run the business more efficiently with its ever-growing size. Although La Aurora continued to grow, the brand would see hardship throughout its development as revolutions and civil unrest occasionally forced production to stop.

The impact of politics

When Rafael Trujillo seized power and named himself dictator in 1930, it ended the unrest but put a target on La Aurora and other private tobacco companies. Trujillo was also involved in the tobacco business, being a large producer of cigarettes, and his regime dampened any opportunity for producers like La Aurora.

Taxes, regulations, trade bans, and targeted laws suffocated many of the Dominican Republic’s tobacco businesses, but La Aurora weathered the storm and continued to produce premium cigars. After 31 long years in power, dissidents assassinated Trujillo, and doors that were once closed to La Aurora were suddenly blown wide open.

In just two years, La Aurora opened a cigarette factory. This would be a huge boon for La Aurora, who used the lucrative profits to further expand the business internationally. The brand would go on to earn a contract to make cigarettes for Phillip Morris, a massive cigarette tobacco conglomerate, for the Dominican market that is still in place today.

Leading up to the fall of Trujillo, La Aurora was on the cutting edge in a number of ways. Not only did they form a union for their workers, recognizing their rights and dignity, but La Aurora also experimented with growing wrapper tobaccos on Dominican soil.

Although the experiments of growing wrapper tobacco failed in the 1960s, the experiment never went away. By 1997 (La Aurora’s 100^th anniversary), the León family found success with Dominican wrapper tobacco. Later, the La Aurora 100 Años earned the coveted #2 Cigar of the Year from Cigar Aficionado in 2004 and the best cigar from the Dominican Republic.

La Aurora’s top-quality Dominican wrapper tobaccos can also be found on the unique La Aurora Dominican ADN. Not only does ADN feature a Dominican wrapper, the fillers, along with Dominican, Nicaraguan, and Pennsylvanian Broadleaf, contain a rare tobacco called Andullo. Andullo tobacco is made by tightly pressing tobacco into a paste that is often chewed but offers a unique flavor in a cigar.

The expansion of La Aurora was not limited to only the tobacco business. In 1980, E. León Jimenes Group opened a beer brewery, producing many popular brands for the Dominican Republic like Heineken and Presidente. It has also expanded into the finance sector and released a top-shelf and extremely limited rum brand for its 110^th anniversary.

Despite the growth away from cigars, La Aurora has never forgotten its roots. In 2011, Guillermo León Herbert took complete ownership of La Aurora and spun it away from the E. León Jimenes Share Group, allowing La Aurora to stand alone and with complete freedom.

Today, La Aurora’s portfolio is filled with several unique blends, many of which honor the brand’s longevity. As its name implies, La Aurora 115^th Anniversary cigars celebrated 115 years of the storied brand’s history with a bold multinational blend of extensively aged tobaccos. With leaves from Brazil, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, these gems are sure to please a seasoned palate.

La Aurora’s longevity also means it has vast stores of extensively aged tobaccos, which are fully displayed in the top-rated La Aurora Hors D’Age 2020. Using Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, and Ecuadorian tobaccos that have been aged for nearly a decade, you can expect vibrant and refined flavors of spices, leather, cedar, roasted nuts, cream, and hints of citrus to grace your palate with every puff.

Another popular and unique blend from La Aurora is the La Aurora 107 Nicaragua. Unlike most of La Aurora’s portfolio, these spicy gems are made entirely with Nicaraguan tobacco and draped in an elegant Nicaraguan Habano wrapper shimmering with oils. Flavors of spice, chocolate, roasted nuts, and leather will leave you wanting more.

With this year marking the 120^th anniversary of the historic La Aurora brand, you can be sure they have something special on the horizon. In the meantime, La Aurora’s 120 years of experience honing its craft has led it to create countless creations worthy of your attention.

Be sure to check out the La Aurora Cigars portfolio at JR Cigar and add some to your humidor!