How to Talk about Cannabis Appellations
Talking about cannabis appellations can be intimidating. You don’t have to be an expert to think about terroir, experience how cannabis expresses the character of a place, and discover your own preferences.
Appellations exist most famously for wine (“Bordeaux, anyone?”) but also for products such Roquefort cheese, Parma Ham, and more. They indicate a place of origin with unique factors that produce distinctive agricultural products.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s CalCannabis Appellations Project (“CAP”) is working on a program that will determine how cannabis appellations are defined and protected.
Here’s how to Talk about Cannabis Appellations:
1. Three areas come into play: Standards, Varietals and Practices.
2. Standards refer to the soil, light, water, and air that provide the conditions for cannabis cultivation. That’s ‘terroir,’ a French term that refers not only to soil but the overall native environment. For example, should only native soil qualify for an appellation product? To what extent do you think the soil can be optimized/altered with supplemental products and still express a region’s character? Or look at light. Is sungrown cannabis the only way to express the character of a place? Now consider water. Worldwide, clean water is an increasingly rare and valuable resource. How does water use impact your choice of cannabis?
3. Varietals is the term used in wine. In Cannabis, it’s often referred to as strains. Connoisseurs of cannabis recognize that the same strain grown with similar practices in different environments will look, taste and feel different. What strains most authentically express a region? Humboldt County is famed for strains such as Ice Cream Cake that won awards at the 2019 Emerald Cup and many others. As farmers grow and experiment, what strains should be included in appellations, and how far should farmers go with experimenting with new and hybrid strains?
4. Practices. That’s the last, but IMHO, not the least of the areas to look at. Practices refer to the human touch from planting to curing. Have you ever consumed cannabis flower that was too dry and not flavorful enough? You know, “styrofoam cannabis?” That can come from cannabis being cut too early, flush-dried, and rushed to market—the fast-food of the industry. Something to consider when you think about Appellation Cannabis is: what does it tell you about how the original plant was handled? How does that affect the taste of your cannabis product?
5. Develop your own taste. This one comes with a disclaimer: I’m a French person living in Humboldt for 20 years, I reported on the French and California wine industry for years, and I enjoy both wine and cannabis. The takeaway? Talk to others with a variety of opinions, enlarge your perspective and most importantly: explore what your personal taste is.