La Flor Dominicana Apollonia Shipping This Week

This week, La Flor Dominicana’s TAA 2025 exclusive cigar will head to a small group of American stores.

The La Flor Dominicana Apollonia is a 6 1/2 x 44 box-pressed lonsdale that uses a Cameroon wrapper over a Dominican binder and Dominican fillers.

Each cigar has an MSRP of $20 and production is limited to 1,500 boxes of 20 cigars.

Its name is a reference to Apollonia Corleone, the first wife of Michael Corleone, the protagonist of The Godfather. Simonetta Stefanelli played the role in the 1972 film.

The TAA is a membership group, around 80 retailers and approximately 40 manufacturers, that gathers annually to discuss issues facing the industry and retailers, as well as to have its annual trade show, a unique event that works on a group buying format in order to secure exclusive deals for these generally high-volume merchants.

During the annual event—the 2025 version took place in late October—the organization holds two selling events, one known as the Dream Machine, where the retailers collectively order to secure larger discounts, while the other is a more traditional trade show. Typically, around a dozen manufacturers release new exclusive cigars for the retail members of the organization under the TAA Exclusive Series Program (ESP) banner. Those manufacturers agree to give a portion of the proceeds to the organization, a minimum of 50 cents per cigar.

For 2025, Casa Carrillo, CLE, Crowned Heads, Ferio Tego, J.C. Newman, Knuckle Sandwich Cigars, La Flor Dominicana and Plasencia announced TAA 2025 ESP releases.

Images via the Tobacconists’ Association of America

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.