A True California Wine Country (High Country) Experience: Cannabis Cuvées
Source: The Daily Beast…Apr 14, 2012
Wines fermented with weed were a novelty in the early 1980s, but now quite a few California winemakers are producing cannabis cuvées on the sly-with cabernet the variety of choice.
Last year, at a Burgundy dinner in New York, I was given a wine that smelled like no Burgundy I’d ever encountered. Instead, it had a pungent herbal aroma that called to mind a college dormitory on a Saturday night-that, or a Grateful Dead concert. The devilish grin on the face of the friend who offered me the mystery liquid confirmed it: what I had in my hand was a glass of pot wine-yes, as in marijuana-laced.
In the spirit of inquiry, I took a sip, and while it neither got me stoned nor made me want to ditch the glass of 1985 Roumier Bonnes-Mares that I was holding in my other hand, it was certainly a novel experience. But it turns out that pot wine isn’t such a novelty in California wine country; there apparently are quite a few winemakers surreptitiously producing cannabis cuvées.
Supposedly, to make cannabis wine, one pound of marijuana is dropped into a cask of fermenting wine, which yields around 1.5 grams of pot per bottle; the better the raw materials, the better the wine.
Truth in Blogging: Today, possession of one ounce (28.5g) or less of marijuana in California is punishable by a maximum US$100 fine with no criminal record. Medical marijuana was legalised in the state of California in 1996. Cultivation of any amount of marijuana is a felony, though people who grow for personal use are eligible for diversion so long as there is no evidence of intent to sell. See: DrinksBusiness
More at The Daily Beast
P.S. This brings a whole new definition to the terms, wine laws, wine blending and wine tasting!
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