Global Ganja Report

A number of California winemakers are secretly producing wines laced with cannabis, Cabernet Sauvignon being the variety of choice for the blend, reports trade journal The Drinks Business April 16. "Pot wine is increasingly fashionable in wine country—much of the marijuana used for the wine comes from California's weed capital Humboldt County," Crane Carter, president of the Napa Valley Marijuana Growers said. "Cabernet Sauvignon from the Stag’s Leap district is thought to pair particularly well with pot." According to Carter, cannabis wine delivers a quicker high than pot brownies, and the combination of alcohol and THC produces "an interesting little buzz."

For now, producers are making the wine in small quantities to be shared in "convivial moments with like-minded people," according to wine writer Mike Steinberger. Offered a cannabis cuvée at a Burgundy dinner in New York, Steinberger described it as having "a pungent herbal aroma that called to mind a college dormitory on a Saturday night—that, or a Grateful Dead concert."

One Californian producer, who chose not to be named, said cannabis-laced wine is "the only truly original style of wine created in the New World." He is one of a number of Central Coast winemakers who are blending two of California's most prized crops.

To make cannabis wine, one pound of marijuana is dropped into a cask of fermenting wine, equivalent to about 1.5 grams of pot per bottle. The alcohol from the fermentation process extracts the THC; some producers opt for maximum extraction, keeping the wine in barrel for nine months before bottling it.

Graphic by Global Ganja Report