CONNOISSEURS OF CANNABIS

Like Fine Wine, Growing Medicinal Weed Has Become So Specialized As
to Inspire Tastings and a New Vocabulary

Stephen DeAngelo bent and sniffed deeply over a clump of frizzy
purple nuggets in a petri dish, one of eight sitting in the middle of
a long refectory table. They were not labeled or arranged in any
particular order, although to the experts assembled in DeAngelo's
Oakland loft -- "cannabis is my calling," he says -- their identity
was no mystery.

"I would describe this as grapey, candy-like, sweet, with a slight
undertone of spice," said DeAngelo, a longtime activist and hemp
promoter who is now chief executive officer of Harborside Health
Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland. He was holding the
tasting at home where he could properly and legally -- at least in
the eyes of California, if not the federal government -- evaluate
some samples. To prepare, he'd taken off his green tweed coat,
loosened his tie and settled in a chair near his vaporizer, an
apparatus that allows him to breathe vapor instead of smoke, because
it's less harsh.

"It is grapey, but I get flowers," said Rick Pfrommer, the
dispensary's purchasing agent, as he inhaled a strain called the
Purps. "I would use the word pungent. It has a pungent funk undertone."

"It is grapey, with a hearty musty bottom," added Elan, the center's
manager, who preferred not to use his last name despite the fact that
he, like Pfrommer and DeAngelo, is a card-carrying medicinal user and
dispensary member.

DeAngelo arranged the tasting to show how far marijuana has come
since the 1970s when, as a common joke goes, there were two kinds of
pot, good and bad. These days, especially in the years since
California approved medical use, there are too many to count.
Harborside offers about 40, each recommended for various ailments and
conditions. Sophisticated growers, who can manipulate color and
cannabinoids -- pot's active ingredients -- bestow their seeds and
strains with exotic names. Some have taken "landrace" or indigenous
breeds from Burma, India, Mexico or California and crossed them to
create, said Elan, "these crazy strains." Center clients can swap
reviews or seek information on the Internet at sites like
weedtracker.com (for medicinal users) or newsstands about the
burgeoning array of options.

There are glossy magazines and cannabis cups, including High Times
magazine's long-standing annual event in Amsterdam where pot smoking
is legal. Marijuana guru Jorge Cervantes, author of a "Medical
Growers Bible" and probably the closest thing the weed world has to
the wine world's Robert Parker, appears in an online High Times video
where he talks about his contest judging "system." Seated at a table
covered with a white cloth and a few dozen samples spread in a
semi-circle, he demonstrates how to squeeze the buds and rate olfactory nuance.

"Some of the fragrances you should look for are sweet, spicy and
musty," he says, dressed in a black jacket, a black beret covering
his long black hair. "If it's sweet, what's it like? Is it like
bubblegum? Is it like honey? ... Is it minty? What does that mean? Is
it like a rose? Or a cherry?"

As the quality and variety of marijuana products in pot clubs have
grown, so too has an emerging marijuana connoisseurship or, as some
call it, "cannasseurship." "I guess," said DeAngelo, when asked about
the term after trying several samples, "I'm a cannasaurus." In
medical marijuana circles, the treatment potential of a certain
strain, whether it produces a "body high" or a "head high" that dulls
pain or stimulates appetite, treats pain, nausea, sleeplessness or
other ailments, is paramount. But to a distinct and discerning
subculture, there is another dimension.

And if there is a center in the United States for this breed of
maven, it is California, particularly the Bay Area. In a region of
wine and food buffs, where there is a constant quest for the best
bread, cheese or olive oil, it's no wonder that marijuana, in its
semi-legal status, has become a new frontier for expertise. There are
medicinal consumers who covet designer strains and varietals -- such
as the one grown and harvested only by women in a remote northern
county -- or who want organic products and say they can taste what
soil or fertilizer was used and want to know the lineage of what they
consume, as well as the expected effects.

"In the Bay Area if you hand a joint to someone, they'll say, 'What
kind is that?' "said DeAngelo. "In Wisconsin, they'll just say, 'Oh,
thanks ...' It is a great time to be in the cannabis business."

As in any industry, say some insiders, some of this is hype and
bluster. Dale Gieringer, California coordinator of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says smoking
various strains and being able to tell the difference is "a mystery to me."

"I've been to cannabis cups and I can look at them and smell them and
judge on appearance, but when it comes to smoking it's impossible to
differentiate [between types]," he said.

Cervantes, who now lives in Spain, says part of the publicity about
new strains can come down to "money, money, money" in America.
Consumers in Northern California, for example, are crazy about purple
strains, he said. In general, they're not as high quality as green
varieties, but someone has figured out that "purple sells."

"People try and be bigger and better than someone else and they make
a lot of it up," he said in a phone interview. "Since it's not a
controlled industry people can use a good story to make money."

And none of this makes any difference to the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration, which doesn't recognize the state's medical marijuana
law. Whether it's called White Widow, Sour Diesel or Bubble Berry,
grown organically, hydroponically or on Aunt Martha's porch, it's
illegal as long at it contains tetrahydrocannabinol, known as THC,
the main active ingredient in marijuana. THC levels have soared since
the 1970s as growers moved indoors and learned more botany, going
from an average of 2 to 3 percent to as high as 20 percent, according
to Greg Sullivan, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division.

"It's a marketing thing, truly just marketing," he said of dope
diversification. "We know they are different strains, like with
wines, but we don't analyze that. ... Marijuana is marijuana. They've
gotten very good at growing marijuana. It's become an art."

The Botanist

In the introduction of his book "The Big Book of Buds," longtime Bay
Area medicinal marijuana activist and writer Ed Rosenthal describes
the history of cannabis, from its origination in the foothills of the
Himalayas to making its way on caravan routes in Asia and the Middle
East and then to Europe and America. There, he says, laws prohibiting
marijuana cultivation are what pushed growers to become more skilled
as they moved underground. The laws actually "inadvertently promoted
a breeding program exceeded by no commercial plant," he says.
California's medical marijuana law further pushed the pioneers,
turning underground botanists into boutique producers who can market
to licensed clubs.

"Marijuana in the last 20 years has undergone an incredible change,
more than at any time in history," says Andrew, a landscaper, who
only wanted to be known by his first name because he has a "side job"
as a gardener for medicinal marijuana patients. "It is in its golden
era now ... Marijuana does not look like it did when I was young."

K, another grower, who wants to be identified by his first initial
because of security concerns, also has watched the transformation of
the marijuana industry. In many ways, he embodies it. At 42, he is
the co-owner of Trichome Technologies, a 10-year-old company that
produces plants for medicinal clubs, and an award-winning grower
who's been voted the best producer in the history of High Times. "I'm
not boasting, just stating my credentials," he said when we first
spoke.When we met a few weeks later, he asked if I was surprised to
see him, not in hippie or Rasta raiment, but in an ordinary pair of
jeans, white tennis shoes and baseball cap. We talked at the Sea
Breeze Market & Deli near the Berkeley Marina because he said he
couldn't "at this time" show his growing operation, although he has
not been shy about his business. A recent High Times spread showcases
his high tech warehouse and research facility, with its custom light,
exhaust, temperature and irrigation systems.

K traces his fascination with marijuana to his childhood in Napa
Valley. "I'm familiar with the wine world and that's why the genetic
makeup of things has always piqued my curiosity," he said. "I've
always admired George Washington Carver and Luther Burbank."

He started cultivating on his own at 13, he said, when he ordered his
first hydroponic kit, the Hydropot. It was not exactly a smashing
success, but an endeavor which kept him out of the "perils and
pitfalls that befall an average teenager." While his cohorts in
middle school were out discovering drugs and alcohol and sex, he was
hunkered down at home studying horticulture and botany on his own.
Saying he had a green thumb would be an understatement. K couldn't
even discard house plants. He still has a philodendron -- named
Herman -- that someone scavenged from a funeral 20 years ago and gave
him to take home.

He admits he "smoked my crop" in the early years, but only after
school and homework. His parents, although not thrilled with his
personal science project, respected the fact that he didn't let it
interfere with school. He graduated, he said, at the top of his class.

After high school, he continued studying botany on his own, forgoing
college to focus on home study of marijuana. "I got my education the
hard way," he said. "No mentors, no professors."

He eventually started experimenting with aeroponics, suspending the
plants in air instead of in soil. "It was magnificent," he said. "I
loved the process. It requires someone who really likes playing with
it." Ultimately, however, the system was too complicated.

In the mid-'80s, he continued growing quietly, never becoming a big
distributor or seller, but producing "for information." Around him he
watched as government surveillance pushed more growers underground
and indoors. He was experimenting with variables -- soil, water,
light and temperature -- to grow "better, simpler, more efficient."
He went from using conventional soil to rocks ("the rock revolution")
to rockwool, a substance that looks like cotton candy pressed into
tubes and is less time consuming than rock to decontaminate. And he
started collecting varieties only available by clone and not by
seeds, until he had a dozen different plant clones and 250 seeds
varieties. Today he grows all boutique varietals, he said, known for
their nuances of color, potency, flavor, aroma and density of flower.

It is the aroma that most intrigues Rosenthal these days. He wants to
isolate the odor molecules that produce fragrances in cannabis. These
molecules, he said, can have "profound effects on whether it's an up
high or a couch lock" and what the marijuana can be used to treat.
Different odors in the herb can increase acuity or relaxation, much
like aromatherapy, he said. He'd like to develop marijuana stripped
of these odor components, then be able to add them back to create
products targeted for specific uses.

K's company produces about 10 strains at any one time, but he said he
is proudest of something called G13, a type "unique to us," and
purple kryptonite ("kryptonite is proprietary too"). What spurs him
on is not commercial success, he explained, but the excitement of
learning. If he didn't have a crop to check on each morning, there
would "be a hole in my soul," he said. As one of the first 300 people
to get a medical marijuana card himself, he uses the herb for pain
related to sports injuries in his shoulders and knees.

But he has too much to do to use marijuana all the time, he said,
returning to how he contradicts the stereotype of the hippie pothead
grower. He would rather work, pursue his interest in race cars or
play with his English bulldog.

"I dream about being able to map the genomes of each and every
variety of marijuana to find out why one is purple or has high THC,"
Rosenthal added. "To me, it's never been about wanting to make money."

The Taste Gurus

The viewing ("you have to look at it carefully and lovingly," said
DeAngelo) and smelling over, the tasters were ready to begin the
penultimate test, tasting. The buzz, of course, is the final quality
to register.

"What do we try first?" asked DeAngelo, surveying the petri dishes.

The group settled on something called Satori. DeAngelo put a pinch in
a special grinder with tiny spikes and then loaded the grounds into a
small chamber in his Stinel vaporizer, which he calls "the Cadillac
of heat guns because of its digital temperature gauge." When he fires
up the heat gun, the THC in the marijuana vaporizes, ending up in
something that looks like a plastic vacuum cleaner bag. Users inhale
the vapor by sucking on a mouthpiece attached to the bag.

"The first thing I look for is how the vapor feels in my lungs," said
DeAngelo. "If it's really good, it will expand."

He inhaled and let out the air slowly. "Is it spicy or flat?" he
said. "You're looking for something a little spicy. Then I gauge the
amount of aftertaste. I think this is spicy, neither sweet nor pungent."

The others inhaled after him and concurred. Next they tried Sour Diesel.

"This is good," Pfrommer said. "Oh my. What a difference." Then he
started to cough. "The flavor, it numbs your tongue and lips."

"It's not numbing, it's tingling," said DeAngelo. "I get more citrus
notes out of this. With this particular Diesel I can taste the
lineage from the citrusy parentage."

Next they sampled some hashish called Mr. Nice, which they inhaled
off a hot coal, avoiding the use of a butane lighter.

"Top shelf," DeAngelo and Pfrommer said together.

"It has an incredible exotic taste that evokes oriental carpets and
brass chandeliers," continued DeAngelo. Then, turning to his
visitors, he added, "This is what we do. We sit around and smoke weed
and talk about work."

Elan said he tries to help each patient -- the Harborside Health
Center has 3,000 members and about 175 visits a day -- find the right
product, either to inhale or eat. Pfrommer chooses the center's pot,
arranged in three glass cases and marked to sell for about $35 to $60
for an eighth of an ounce, from a select group of small "vendors." As
many as 40 a day, all center members with medicinal pot cards, come
to show him their buds or cloned plants, but he buys from perhaps 10
percent of them, he said. He examines each specimen with a scope to
look for resin, an indicator of strength and quality -- which under
close inspection should look like a dusting of snow. He smells and
palpates them to find the best. "The rest leave with advice on how to
make their medicine better," he said. "The new generation of younger
growers has a lot of energy. The older ones who used to make a living
can't do it anymore. I explain how the market has changed, that they
need a niche or a strain that people want or they should get another job."

DeAngelo said he sees Harborside, which already resembles a spa, with
its high ceilings, turquoise walls, stainless steel cabinets and soft
jazz, as a holistic health center. It offers yoga, hypnotherapy and
medical qigong and he wants to add acupuncture. A marijuana activist
since his teens when he participated in "smoke-ins" in Washington,
D.C., DeAngelo said he dreamed of having a state-of-the-art
dispensary. And now he has one.

The group eventually worked its way through five samples, then quit
because everyone had to go back to work. They were not used to
getting "medicated" during work hours, they said. Besides, they
admitted, it was getting hard to evaluate the buzz. They were
noticeably quieter as the tasting drew to a close. DeAngelo suggested
a trip to a nearby Starbucks, hoping the caffeine would help them
focus for the rest of the afternoon.

"I have another thought about the development of cannabis
connoisseurship," he said as we were about to leave. "It's a classic
story of American innovation. Marijuana has been around for thousands
of years until it crossed our shores and we examined it and made it
better and invented new ways of ingesting it. That's in the
mainstream of American values."