When you consume cannabis, how often do you think about its flavour?

Sure, most may take a whiff at a dispensary to help the decision-making, but is it the main reason one reaches for the bud when it is time to toke?

I imagine the answer for many would be no.

But for a handful of industry professionals, they are staking their careers on a passion for the rich flavours and smells cannabis can produce — and hoping others can be persuaded to feel the same way.

From cannabis sommelier courses to new “elevated” dining experiences, they are taking cannabis and flavour to the next level.

Greencamp spoke to a few of these canna-experts about what weed tastes like, about their passion for cannabis’ flavour, and how it can truly make for a new and fulfilling experience.

Cannabis sommeliers

A cannabis sommelier is someone who introduces another to the world of cannabis and is an expert in its qualities, breeding and history.

While wine sommeliers have existed for quite some time, cannabis sommeliers are a fairly new breed who are just starting to get their footing, aided by courses such as those offered by Vancouver-based CannaReps, which claims to offer the first cannabis sommelier course in Canada.

Aldolfo Gonzalez started the company with co-founder Enid Chen in 2017, as a way to empower cannabis professionals with more knowledge of the plant and its culture and history.

“Basically, what we do is bring people into a classroom and allow them to experience [cannabis] first hand from a physical analysis,” he said.

Gonzalez says his courses, which are currently available in two different levels with a third that will be introduced soon, present cannabis along with scientific research so participants can learn how to distinguish different strains from their look, feel and smell, as well as know the history and culture behind those strains.

“Understanding plant varieties and how that contributes to different flavours, aromas, and which one a particular individual enjoys, that’s the name of the game,” he said.

To Gonzalez, cannabis isn’t just for getting high, but is an art form in itself — and its breeders are the artists.

He brings up DJ Short, who Gonzalez says spent a decade creating the Blueberry cannabis strain, which was released in 1978.

“He is a Picasso and nobody has recognized him as such, nobody has paid him any money for making it,” he said. “In most parts of the world, traditional growers and breeders are looked at as criminals and something that needs to be stamped out.”

Gonzalez tries to build an appreciation for strains’ history in his courses, which he asserts helps distinguish great cannabis from mediocre.

“When the plant is happy, it is like, ‘Oh my lord, this is what it can be,”’ he said. “[Breeders] treat the plant like a living creature that has some level of sensitivity. They give it everything that that genetic desires for a long time, for thousands of years of evolution.”

Gonzalez says that the “best plants in the world” have eight percent terpenes, 32 percent THC or CBD.

“It is a different animal,” he said.

New ways to appreciate the plant

Once you’ve experienced good, flavourful cannabis, Gonzalez says it is hard to go back to run-of-the-mill buds after that. It will make you notice the richness of the cannabis’ smell and flavour, and its subtle notes, such as pine tree or lemon.

Gonzalez says his students are now typically from large cannabis corporations who he helps gain a new angle on the plant that they can use to aid in the storytelling for their brands.

The appreciation for cannabis is gaining momentum. The Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers (CAPS) is eyeing cannabis as part of their program, according to Gonzalez, and organized a series of events for the first two months after legalization in Canada last October.

Other cannabis sommelier courses are opening up, as well.

Denver-based Trichome Institute offers “Interprening” courses, meaning to “interpret terpenes.”

Terpenes are compounds in the cannabis plant that give it aroma, which can vary from pineapple to blueberry or a “skunk” smell, and is said to influence the drug’s psychoactive effects. When terpenes allegedly work with other cannabis components in a synergistic manner, it is called the “entourage effect.”

The same terpenes that exist in cannabis are also present in different foods and flowers, such as limonene in citrus fruits.

“Elevated dining”

Some are taking advantage of this connection between cannabis and food to enhance the flavour of both, in what is known as “elevated dining.”

These cannabis dining experiences are popping up in cities both in the U.S. and Canada.

The premise is typically the same. A group of diners, sometimes strangers, sign up for a chef’s cannabis-infused tasting menu that involves multiple courses.

One chef who has spearheaded the new trend that pairs cannabis with flavour is Travis Petersen, AKA The Nomad Cook.

Petersen, who had a stint on Canadian TV cooking competition Top Chef, says he started his cooking series on April 20 (4/20, get it?) last year, and since then has served over 2,500 cannabis-infused dinners from coast-to-coast in Canada, as well as in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.

Petersen says those who partake in the dinners are largely the “canna-curious,” or people who are not heavy users; 35 percent of his diners are first-time users.

“I would have assumed most of my guests would have been young 20-year-old males that smoke a lot of cannabis but my average age is 37 and 58 percent female,” he said.

Food that opens the mind

Petersen infuses his food with THC and CBD, psychoactive and non-psychoactive components of cannabis, respectively, as well as terpenes, which he says “opens people’s minds” to new flavours and smells that “accentuate and highlight” each course.

A terpene he often uses to start off his meals is myrcene with its earthy taste, which he combines with a canopy once guests enter that “therapeutic effect of being hungry, the munchy feeling.”

Then he uses limonene in the first course to give guests a boost of energy and “get the conversation going,” and linalool (which is also found in lavender) in deserts to calm and relax guests.

“I find the terpenes really wake up the palate and bring it to attention after a bit, it really awakens the mouth,” he said.

To not overwhelm newcomers to cannabis, he offers diners a scale of 1-5 for dosing strength, with 10 mg being the dose he chooses for the whole dinner for someone new to cannabis.

Petersen says that cannabis-infused dining is a “new frontier in the culinary world” and thinks it will only get bigger. To help facilitate this growth, he has launched the Culinary Cannabis Association, which he says is the first governing body to certify and train chefs on how to use cannabis properly.

“This is not a niche fad that is popular now because cannabis is legal,” he said. “There are chefs popping up all over the country doing this.”

These include other companies such as The Herbal Chef run by Chris Sayegh, or Altered Plates, run by brother and sister Holden Jagger and Rachel Burkons.

The National Restaurant Association recently released a report that showed 77 percent of chefs feel food infused with cannabis and CBD are the top two trends in the industry for 2019.

Cannabis and wine flavour pairings

However, Gonzalez says that pairing the plant with food is not a traditional way to experience it, and often infused dining experiences hide cannabis’ flavour, making its inclusion mostly about getting high.

He says a cannabis sommelier would also never pair cannabis with alcohol because their job is to bring someone into the world of cannabis safely — making alcohol and its risky effects when combined with cannabis not appropriate.

While Petersen doesn’t serve alcohol at his dinners, another chef, Chris Klugman, does bring the two together because he says it can reveal new flavours that wouldn’t be possible alone.

“The terpenes, because of their interaction with the flavour of the wine, change the flavour of the wine,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of fun playing with this.”

Klugman, a trained wine and cannabis sommelier who took Gonzalez’s CannaRep courses, runs the Paintbox restaurant and catering company in Toronto. He has also recently begun experimenting with elevated dining experiences with his new brand, High Flights.

In his multi-course dinners, he plays with different flavour combos between food, cannabis and wine or beer, such as mixing sativa-dominant White Shark with the Ontario champagne blend Westcott Brilliant to fill out the middle palate of the wine.

Like Gonzalez, Klugman agrees that infusing food with cannabis is not the way to get the most of either flavour, but instead his guests “nose” weed with a big whiff or vaporize it, which he says is a great way to get cannabis’ flavour.

“[Combining cannabis with food] is super fascinating, and when it works, it is really crazy good,” Klugman said. “It gives a new experience to the traditional multi-course tasting menu and gives me a chance to play with some of the tricks and practices that are common in molecular gastronomy, which makes it more magical.”

These tricks include serving a lavender cheesecake enclosed with a lid and filled with cannabis smoke, which Klugman says smokes the cake.

He says that cannabis is a natural for pairing with food and wine because of their shared terpenes, but the same terpene can be perceived differently in cannabis because of how it interacts with the plant’s other components. Cannabis’ different terpenes can interact with each other to give the drug a wide variety of flavours, so your cannabis may end up tasting like a wedding cake, for instance.

“There are a lot of relationships on the flavour and aroma basis,” he said.

Chiang Mai’s Maejo University has succeeded in creating the first Thai-bred, industrial-grade medical cannabis, giving Thailand the distinction of becoming the first country in Asia to develop a proprietary breed of the plant for medical use, a government official reports.

Anutin Charnvirakul, a deputy prime minister and public health minister, made the announcement while visiting Maejo’s Natural Agriculture Research and Development Centre this weekend.

“This project is a collaboration between Maejo University, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation [GPO], and the Department of Medical Science since June,” Anutin told Asia One on Saturday. “We expect to deliver 2.4 tonnes of dried cannabis to the GPO to produce cannabis-based drugs by February next year.”

Anutin said the accomplishment has been long time coming thanks to the hard work of the university’s researchers, who have spent countless hours developing organic, pesticide-free means of outdoor growing that the school hopes could potentially be used in small, community-based cannabis farms sometime in the near future.

“We aim to perfect a technique where a household can grow six cannabis plants in their yard and use them safely for medical purposes,” Anutin said. “Maejo’s breed is strong and of high quality that contains both cannabidiol and tetrahydrocannabinol, two natural compounds that have medical benefits in the preferred quantity.”

Dr. Anat Tancho, director of the Natural Agriculture Research and Development Centre, said that Maejo’s cultivation plans hinge on the development of an ideal growing environment in order to refine the quality and efficacy of the cannabis grown on site.

“We follow the standards of IFOAM [International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements] and USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] organic standard,” said Dr. Anat. “Moreover, since marijuana is still a narcotic plant, we also strictly adhere to the GSP [Good Security Practices] to ensure full compliance with the law.”

Thailand is quickly emerging as the most cannabis-friendly country in Asia, and has been gradually loosening restrictions surrounding the drug for some time. A recent proposed law would allow Thais to grow up to six plants at home for medical consumption and allow plants to be sold to licensed institutions.

“The principle is for medical use. You can have it at home for ailments, but not smoke it on the street,” senior Bhumjaithai Party legislator Supachai Jaisamut told Reuters earlier this month.

Recreational cannabis remains strictly prohibited in Thailand. Penalties for possession can range from a heavy fine to up to a decade in prison.

The provincial city of Cosenza, at the southern tip of Italy’s boot, is hardly one of the country’s metropolitan centers. But, amidst the town’s narrow streets, several low-THC cannabis shops are open for business.

One of the most prominent is Cicileu, just a block off the Corso Mazzini, Cosenza’s main drag and pedestrian mall. It opened in April 2018, taking its name from the slang word for getting high in a regional dialect (celebrated in songs by local reggae and rap bands) — even though the stuff on sale there doesn’t actually get you high.

But beautiful and fragrant buds are in open display, each in a sealed package marked with the percentage of THC and CBD, all within legal limits that restrict the amount of THC to 0.6%. There is also a perfunctory note on the display cases saying that samples are for “collection” and “ornamental” use. There are also bottles of CBD-infused olive oil, wines and liqueurs, and packages of hemp pasta.

Cicileu co-owner Antonio Agovino says wryly, “We can market it thanks to a legislative hole. There is no law that says you can sell it, but none that says that you can’t.”

But this loophole has led to some turbulent times. In the spring, when Italy’s then-Deputy Prime Minister and de facto leader Matteo Salvini went on an anti-cannabis tirade, Agovino shut the shop to be safe. When Salvini was ousted this September, Agovino reopened the shop. He’s now among the country’s hopeful that a more permissive cannabis climate could be around the corner.

Antonio Agovino in his shop Cicileu.

Italy’s New Leading Coalition

Throughout this summer, Matteo Salvini served as Italy’s far-right de facto leader. When it came to cannabis, Salvini was seen as the figure standing in the way of any progress toward legalization in the country. Now, following a government shake-up in late August, he is gone — and legalization advocates have been swift to react.

Enza Bruno Bossio, a lawmaker with the center-left Democratic Party, one of the two partners of the new coalition government, said last week that the way is now cleared to press the legalization question, according to Italian website Droghe.

Hailing the end of what she called “salviniano obscurantism,” she said there may be sufficient “numbers in parliament” for a cannabis legalization law. “We can now open a discussion in the light of the new red and yellow majority,” she said.

“Red” is a reference to her own party, while “yellow” refers to the fuzzy populists of the Five Star Movement, Salvini’s former coalition partners — who remain the wild card on the issue. Five Star spoke initially spoke in favor of legalization, then flipped when it joined Salvini in power. It remains to be seen if the party will return to its libertarian roots, at least on this issue.

Futile Efforts at Clampdown Under Salvini

Italy’s right-wing governments have sought to tighten up a moderately tolerant cannabis policy since 1993, when Italian voters approved a referendum decriminalizing personal possession of all drugs. But cultivation and sale have remained criminal charges.

Italy’s Constitutional Court in 2014 struck down a 2006 drug law that jacked up sentences for selling, cultivating or trafficking cannabis from 2-4 years to 6-20.

But Salvini revived the clampdown effort upon taking power last June. This May, he blustered: “From today, I’ll go to war on cannabis street by street, shop by shop, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.”

This was actually a reference to low-THC varieties, which are sold openly in shops across Italy — and don’t get you high at all. Some smoke them for the CBD, others merely for the cachet of the experience. 

The European Union actually has a 0.2% THC limit for legal hemp, lower than the 0.3% limit in the United States. But for internal use within Italy, Law 242 of 2016 establishes a 0.6% limit — still not enough for an intoxicating effect, but providing more flexibility in the available strains.

Days after Salvini’s May proclamation, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation, the highest judicial body in criminal cases, ruled that selling cannabis or its derivatives is illegal despite Law 242.

This was hailed as victory by Salvini. But he either didn’t read the fine print, or was hoping that others wouldn’t. The text of the ruling contained a clear exception for “agricultural” varieties, and “products that in practice have no drugging effect.”

Contrary to the media buzz, the ruling actually didn’t change a thing — and Italy’s low-THC cannabis shops remain open. Some closed doors in response to Salvini’s threats. But with his fall, they are now starting to re-open.

An Italian Grandfather’s Weed

Agovino, the owner of Cicileu, has now re-opened his store, at the same location in Cosenza. He points with pride to a package marked “The Grandfather’s Weed” — in fashionable English. The package also sports a portrait of a rustic-looking old farmer with an impish expression and an outsized mustache. This is actually Agovino’s real grandfather, who grows the 0.2% THC bud on his mountaintop farm.

Agovino says his nonno has been growing cannabis for the past four years on the lands passed down in his family for generations, in the mountains west of Cosenza.

“Before that he was growing tomatoes, fruits, greens,” he says, “but he smoked cannabis in Germany in his 20s, while working in a factory there.”

The store sells 20 varieties, all grown in Italy — five from Calabria, several from Umbria, in central Italy. High-CBD strains are now being cultivated throughout Italy, including in greenhouses in the north, where the growing season is shorter.

The seed must come from within the EU, and only some 50 strains are approved.

“It can’t even come from Switzerland,” Agovino says. “And you can’t cross genetics.”

But he says that low-THC varieties from Hungary produce higher THC levels in the better climate conditions of Calabria.

Even without much THC, in fact, Agovino says, “People buy it to relax, for insomnia, to relieve anxiety. Many adults come here to not have to buy from the underworld.”

Italy has had a medical marijuana program since 2014, but it is very tightly controlled. The cannabis is grown by the military on a base near Florence, and registered users can only purchase one gram a month at a pharmacy. “So people have to go the street and buy illegal, because that’s not enough,” Agovino says.

Calabria’s notorious crime machine, the ‘Ndrangheta, used to grow lots of cannabis, but it largely switched to moving cocaine in the 1980s. Compacted illicit-market pot is now mostly coming in from Albania, across the Adriatic Sea, and Agovino says it often adulterated with methadone.

But legal production of low-THC strains is taking root fast. “There’s been a huge explosion of cultivation in Calabria this year,” Agovino says. 

And he’s proud to be a part of the new economy. A former pipeline worker for Italy’s ENI oil company, Agovino says he is much happier now. “This is my dream since I was a teenager.”