Cannabis Musings - June 26, 2025

Cannabis tasting rooms?

Friends – we’re still running our quarterly Paid Subscription drive, kindly asking you to support these Cannabis Musings with your money ($5 per month - cheap!). In addition to being a mensch, you get to ask me questions and have them answered. Like one of our subscribers, who asked me the following:

“Do you think there will ever be a cannabis equivalent of visiting a winery to taste wines? By that, I mean one goes to growers, preferably outdoors, and samples different strains in a relaxed, upscale setting?”

Because they’re a paid subscriber, I’m going to answer their question. I love this particularly because, when I first started in cannabis, I still had one foot in the Napa wine industry, and envisioned a day when wineries would be able to offer cannabis pairings as part of the tasting room experience. This was a topic of conversation at the Wine & Weed Symposiums put on by Wine Industry Network during a simpler time, but was a mere pipe dream – not only does California (still) prohibit the collocated consumption of cannabis and alcohol, but Napa County’s wine industry (still) isn’t very cannabis friendly.

I think the answer to the question is yes, and not only that, I think it’s kind of already here. Cannabis “tastings” are what some of the lounges that are popping up around the country are going for. Take, for example, Cirrus Social Club in Denver. Its menu includes a tasting flight of three different strains (cultivars). The Artist Tree in Los Angeles offers various THC-infused cocktails. Closer to the winery tasting experience, friends of newsletter Sonoma Hills Farm do pairing dinners at their spectacular farm in the Sonoma countryside. It would be a matter of offering a variety of lower-dose products that could be consumed over a longer period. The tricky part is that everyone’s endocannabinoid system is different, so while a customer may not be able to experience how different cultivars have different effects in a single session, they ought to be able to experience various terpene flavor profiles across cultivars. (To truly recreate the winery aesthetic, they’d just need to some mid-century furniture, lots of reclaimed wood, and a turntable.)

As a hardcore wine nerd, I savor knowing everything I can about a wine I’m drinking – the winery’s history, the winemaker’s background and training, the soil, the location, the vinification process, everything. Projects like California’s Cannabis Appellations Program, ratings services like our friends of the newsletter at Budist, and industry groups like the Cannabis Media Council (full disclosure: I’m an Advocate for the group) help the consumer understand more about the product they’re enjoying, bringing depth to the experience.

There’s no reason that cannabis lounges can’t offer the same kind of education to their customers – from the cannabis nerd who wants to know everything about the very flower they’re smoking (one potential upside of tracking seed-to-sale), to the person who’s new to cannabis and wants to learn the basics of cannabinoids, terpenes, and cultivars. We’ve talked before about the need for the cannabis industry to grow as demand flattens out in legacy states and the built-in customer base is satisfied. These venues could play a crucial role in education towards that end as they become more a part of the landscape.

This is even more so as the licensed cannabis industry wrestles with the proliferation of so-called “intoxicating hemp.” We’ve talked a lot lately about hemp drinks, with hemp becoming a bit of a political football over the past week. On the one hand, you’ve got Texas, one of the largest hemp THC markets in the country, vetoing a ban but heading towards fairly restrictive regulation that would potentially tie hemp to alcohol even closer. On the other hand, you’ve got Congress, which either wants to entirely close the loophole or open it up even further (sort of). Prognosticating the endgame here is about as useful as trying to divine the future through scapulimancy. In the meantime, hemp drinks aren’t going away. It’s still too early to tell if they have staying power with consumers, but as friend of the newsletter, Eric Berlin, Partner at Dentons and one of the progenitors of the cannabis bar, noted to me a few days ago, they’re bringing people into cannabis in a way that the licensed cannabis industry hasn’t been able to.

As noted, licensed (i.e., non-hemp) cannabis has struggled to grow its customer base. As states go legal, we see a surge in demand that eventually tapers off. At heart, this is because the consumers who are going to buy from dispensaries are being fully satisfied. So where are the new customers going to come from, and how can the industry invest in that mass customer acquisition when it (as a whole) is struggling to tread water? Perhaps THC hemp drinks will help fill that need, providing an easy-to-access, low barrier, lower cost “starter” experience with cannabis. Perhaps cannabis lounges can bring in folks who enjoy THC hemp drinks and educate them about the depth and breadth of cannabis products available. Perhaps the licensed cannabis industry could figure out a way to convert those customers who want to learn more. Perhaps this is a way towards détente.

Az men geyt tsvishn layt, veys men vos es tut zikh bay zikh in der heym. (“Mix with the neighbors and you learn what’s doing in your own house.”)

Be seeing you.

© 2025 Marc Hauser. None of the foregoing is legal, investment, or any other sort of advice, and it may not be relied upon in any manner, shape, or form. The foregoing represents my own views and not those of Jardín or anyone else who hires me.