By: Andrew Freedman; The Cannabis Sommelier

This experiment starts like a familiar wine tasting (if you are not familiar its very easy to pretend). Stick your nose deep in your glass of wine and sniff it gently but deeply, try to understand as much about the wine as you can. Taste the wine and collect the same data.

Now smell the cannabis with with same intent as you smelled your wine. understand your cannabis.

 Now inhale the fragrance of both your wine and cannabis, holding each in different hands. Smell them side by side rapidly, confusing your sense of smell and blending the two aromas together.

Next try tasting your wine and smelling the cannabis. Notice how the taste of wine changes on your palate? We can only taste 5 things: Sour, sweet, salty, bitter and umami. But we can smell millions of aromas, this combination of taste and smell is what creates flavour.  Smelling cannabis while drinking your wine creates an entirely new experience for both products.

 Finally if you’d enjoy consuming some cannabis I always suggest vaporizing it. This way you will get the purest essence of flavour and will avoid incinerating plant matter.

Have a puff, let the cannabis settle on your palate for 10-20 seconds. Try and understand the flavours. Now have another sip of wine. Do you notice anything different? A pereception that the wine is sweeter? Feels thicker in your mouth? New flavours? More acidic? More alcoholic?

There are great pairings and bad pairings. Exploring them is part of the fun!

Now you know the basics of cannabis and wine pairings! An experience that rivals pinot noir and chocolate ice cream or Riesling and carne asada tacos! Those may seem weird but you’ll just have to take my word for it! I hope you’ll share your favorite pairings with me on Instagram, twitter or facebook.