Introducing the first ten inaugural inductees into our Leaf MagazineCannabis Edibles Hall of Fame honoring lasting contributions to the world of marijuana-infused foods. These pioneers and legends changed the way we consume weed, from brownies to beverages and beyond. Send your nominations for future inclusion to dan@leafmagazines.com.
Warren Bobrow a.k.a. The Cocktail Whisperer
Author, chef, mixologist and “Cannabis Alchemist” Warren Bobrow got his start in the alcohol industry, having studied food writing at New School University and the French Culinary Institute. He’s also written multiple books, including “Apothecary Cocktails, Whiskey Cocktails, Bitters and Shrub Syrup Cocktails” and “The Craft Cocktail Compendium.” His 2016 book, “Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails & Tonics: The Art of Spirited Drinks & Buzz-Worthy Libations,” introduced the mainstream to marijuana-infused liquid beverages – now an entire segment of the legal weed industry. In fact, he’s also the co-founder and CEO of Klaus (@drinkklaus), creating terpene-forward craft Cannabis cocktails for the marijuana marketplace.
Warren Bobrow: Please tell me about yourself. What are you striving for in your professional career? What differentiates your dispensary from others?
Courtney Caron: I am a co-owner of The Artist Tree – Fresno. I am also the Founder of Adamant Law Group, a cannabis centered boutique law firm focusing on the representation of cannabis retailers, which led to me meeting the founders of The Artist Tree and co-owning The Artist Tree Fresno!
Professionally, I wear many hats. Whether engaging in the practice of cannabis law in California, consulting out of state, or checking customer IDs at our Fresno location (my favorite pastime), I strive to promote the normalization of cannabis use. As a retail store co-owner my main objective is to ensure that each customer, we welcome through our doors is provided with a unique retail shopping experience that is free from pressure and stress. Our ultimate goal is to provide an environment where all of our customers feel welcomed, appreciated, and safe. Because our business model is so unique and truly a community benefit in itself, I would love to see an Artist Tree retail store in every major city across the state of California and the US, giving artists one more platform to present their creations.
Fresno Exterior. Photo Courtesy of the Artist Tree
Warren Bobrow: What kind of research did you do to establish an interior design? Did you work with an architect? What kind of materials did you utilize?
Courtney Caron: The Artist Tree’s original concept was created in 2018 for the city of West Hollywood’s retail application process. Founders Lauren Fontein, Avi Kahan, Mitch Kahan and Aviv Halimi understood that West Hollywood celebrates the arts in so many ways, and we felt that the first cannabis retail store in West Hollywood should too. Unlike the lackluster, windowless dispensaries of days past, focused solely on cannabis, The Artist Tree is as much an art gallery as it is a store. It highlights and enhances the vibrant art community by showcasing a carefully curated mix of local artwork from established and up-and-coming artists.
Our design aesthetic was created by renowned architectural firm Retail Design Collaborate (RDC). Materials incorporated in our design include glass display cases, light colored wood flooring and shelving, custom metal flower tables, custom metal art easels, bright but soft lighting and an open floor concept. Most notably, at both the Fresno location and West Hollywood location we feature a large glass cube where clones are grown and sold.
Fresno Joan Sharma Easel. Photo Courtesy of the Artist Tree.
Warren Bobrow: What are your six and twelve month goals? What kind of obstacles do you face along the way? How do you anticipate removing those obstacles?
Courtney Caron: Within the next 6 months, The Artist Tree plans to open their Oxnard location and their El Sobrante location. Additionally, we hope to bring more awareness to cannabis consumers of our West Hollywood consumption lounge.
Within the next 12 months, we hope to find additional opportunities for retail in California and start to expand beyond the CA borders. We’d love to celebrate art and cannabis across the US.
Obstacles we typically encounter include slow moving municipalities, community push back related to cannabis in general, and more recently, the recession. We tackle slow moving municipalities by being extremely organized and prepared to hit the ground running on all of our projects. We are typically the first retail store to open in most jurisdictions where we hold a license. We try to keep a wide open line of communication, and always welcome dubious municipalities and community members to visit one of our galleries across the state. Tackling a recession can be a bit trickier. The Artist Tree always offers daily deals on top quality products for our customers. This helps even the most budget conscious consumer purchase safe, tested, quality cannabis.
Fresno Joanna Chrys Art. Photo courtesy The Artist Tree.
Warren Bobrow: Do you work with local artists? Who are they? What are their mediums?
Courtney Caron: In each Artist Tree location, we showcase art created by artists from the community where the store is located. Artists may submit their art for any of our locations on our website here.
In our Fresno location, our first art installation featured paintings and photography by Joan Sharma, Nicolas Rattaire, and Lance Anderson.
Fresno Art Portrait. Photo Courtesy of the Artist Tree
Warren Bobrow: What is your passion?
Courtney Caron: I am extremely passionate about serving the local communities where we operate. Developing and implementing Community Benefit Plans in each community brings both me and my partner Lauren Fontein great joy. Whether donating funds, conducting in-kind donation drives, or volunteering our time with deserving non-profit organizations, we are passionate about improving the lives of others in a meaningful way. At the core of The Artist Tree is the celebration of the arts. Whether performing arts or fine arts, we are passionate about promoting the creativity present in each of our communities.
For those of you who don’t know my own professional background in Food and Beverage, all you have to do is spend the better part of several decades working your way from the bottom up. In my case, that meant starting as a pots and pans “engineer” better known as a pot-scrubber, then graduating to the exalted place known as the dish sink. After languishing in front of a soapy sink full of greasy dishes for a couple of months, my path to the line… (That’s what we call the actual place where cooking is done in the professional kitchen…) And then, if that wasn’t enough education after college, I took it upon myself to become a bartender, from bar-back on up. Thank you to Chris James for seeing to my education become something actually tangible.
To really learn the food and beverage business, it’s essential to make yourself as well-trained as possible so you can do anything that needs to get done. From taking out the trash to making drinks, this is the way that you become essential to your employer. Otherwise, you’ll be washing dishes for the remainder of your restaurant career. And no… When you graduate from culinary school you are not a chef. Period.
The grunt labor thing in a restaurant was not where I wanted to be for very long. Fortunately, the dish sink was a short-lived adventure into doing really hard work. Manual labor if you will. Which framed the next forty or so years of my life into the person I am today. Working hard, doing something I love. That’s the key to life in my opinion. But that’s just my path, the one of Sara Stewart is quite succinct and I know she is going places. Read her words, Sara is a success story waiting to be discovered, yet again.
Warren Bobrow: Please tell us about your journey into cannabis and how you got into cannabis hospitality.
Sara Stewart: My initial journey into cannabis started in 2019 at Lowell Cafe, the first true cannabis restaurant in America, serving cannabis alongside food, coffee, juice, etc. I had been in the restaurant, nightclub, and event space for almost 15 years, working for some of the most successful companies in Los Angeles, and I was ready for a change. Although I had been a cannabis consumer for most of my adult life, I was unfamiliar with the legal market. I learned METRC from a hospitality viewpoint, which was incredibly unique. I had also been documenting several of the pain points this kind of business underwent, and I wanted to help others avoid some of these headaches in the future.
Upon leaving Lowell Cafe, I started Highspitality to consult for other lounges and eventually joined Green Thumb Industries full-time as a lounge specialist. My time with GTI opened the door for me to help lobbyists and public officials create some of the regulations in new markets, such as Las Vegas. In October of 2021, I opened my second lounge in Mundelein, Ill., making it the first licensed cannabis lounge east of the Mississippi River.
Photo: Sara Stewart
Warren Bobrow: Why do you think consumption lounges are the future of cannabis?
Sara Stewart: We know Americans are consuming more cannabis than ever before, and taxes from the sales of Cannabis are surpassing alcohol in many legal states. As someone who is incredibly passionate about hospitality and customer service, I believe that what we are experiencing now is prohibition 2.0.
In my opinion, cannabis lounges will play an important role in normalizing cannabis use, just as bars did for the reintroduction of alcohol post-prohibition. They will provide a social place for safe cannabis consumption and educational opportunities for curious consumers. Although cannabis usage looks much different than alcohol, I hope onsite consumption will elevate the cannabis industry by implementing hospitality-driven operations that create a familiar environment replicating a social club or lounge.
Warren Bobrow: What concepts do you think will define cannabis hospitality and lounges?
Sara Stewart: I believe the defining concepts in lounges will be hospitality-driven first and cannabis second. Most cannabis companies buy retail buildings with additional square footage and assume they can just “build a lounge” attached to it. Imagine buying a liquor store and then trying to build a cafe or restaurant out the back — you simply wouldn’t do that.
Many lounges that aren’t open yet are grappling with how to make money, struggling to build out unique customer experiences, and aren’t working with their local governments to create and implement appropriate and necessary regulations. This is a major issue, and in my opinion, the concepts that will win won’t just focus on cannabis as their main offering.
Warren Bobrow: What do you want people to know about visiting a lounge for the first time?
Sara Stewart: Start low and go slow — you can always take more, but you can never take less.
If the rules or process seems unnatural or different, it’s most likely a regulation that the company has to comply with (for example, we don’t want to charge cannabis and food on separate checks, but we have to).
Lastly, do some research on the lounge you’re visiting. Every lounge is different; some allow you to bring your own products while others prohibit it and require reservations, so you should know what to expect upon arrival. Keep in mind these models are new and destined to change often.
Warren Bobrow: What are your top 3 favorite cannabis products and why?
Sara Stewart: I love flower, and I’m typically a Sativa diva, so I have to say Lemon Trill by Lumpy’s in California. I also can’t live without the Snoozeberries Chocolate Bar from Incredibles and my long-time love, Cereal Milk by CBX.
Recently I had the good fortune to taste through the line of Rove cannabis products, specifically the vape cartridges. These ultra-luxe products are by far, some of the most authentically reproduced cannabis vape carts I’ve ever enjoyed. I think what makes them so intriguing is the “taste of the place” or in layman’s terms, the terroir of the plant. These carts are so good. They taste like smoking a fat bud, instead of layering your palate with candy flavors. Rove has harnessed the art of the plant, in a simple-to-use format, its well-designed vape pen. Kudos to them!
Warren Bobrow: Chris, please tell me about yourself. Where are you from? Why cannabis? When did you first discover the plant? Do you remember what you were listening to?
Chris Marroquin: I am the Director of Manufacturing here at Rove. I grew up in Nevada after my family relocated from LA in 1993, and Las Vegas will always feel like home. I first discovered cannabis in high school, when my classmate’s dad was growing it and introduced my friend to growing. I was fascinated with all aspects of the plant: how to grow, cure and store it, its effects, how to cook with it, and how to make extracts. Back then Green Day, Bush, and MxPx would be spinning on my portable CD player.
Photo Courtesy of Rove
Warren Bobrow: Tell me about your Ice Hash and Live Rosin. I’ve been sampling the goods and they are incredibly terroir-driven. I can really taste the plant and I find that quite beguiling. Your thoughts on the process?
Chris Marroquin: We are lucky to have strong relationships with our farm partners, and I’m regularly out in the literal field meeting new and up-and-coming farmers and touching the plant. When I do this, I’m looking at both the overall health of the grow and focusing on the terpene profile’s potential for becoming a well-balanced flavor profile in any one of our different Rove product lines.
The process for our rosin starts with perfectly ripened plants. Once ready for harvest, they are picked and immediately flash-frozen. This technique preserves the flavor profile of the plant at its most pristine without degrading any core properties. From this stage, the plant is ready to be mechanically separated into bubble hash using water as a carrier. The hash is then filtered and freeze-dried before being pressed into rosin. Terroir is a huge part of rosin. Growing medium, growing practices, environment, and light affect the plant’s ability to achieve its genetic potential.
Cannabis production, when optimized through a careful and hands-on process, can produce high levels of terpenoids, flavonoids, and cannabinoids. Creating the perfect environment and set of protocols, combined with some of our proprietary Rove techniques to decrease degradation and maintain freshness and purity is what gives the rosin that lip-smacking taste. The result is that the original plant profile can be experienced on a level far beyond its original plant form.
Warren Bobrow: Do you have a mentor? What are your six and twelve-month goals? What obstacles do you face? How do you anticipate removing them?
Chris Marroquin: My dad has been a lifelong mentor to me, for pretty much everything. His attention to detail and empathic intelligence really resonate with and inspire me. As far as work goes, our CEO Paul Jacobson has been an integral mentor in helping me understand the business side of cannabis. And beyond my family and close colleagues, I’ve followed The Rev for a long time, reading his books and articles. Haven’t met him yet, but True Living Organics is my favorite cultivation book.
Personally, in six months I’d like to have closed on at least 10 more acres of land. I believe land gives you freedom, and because it’s a finite resource I see it as an investment, too. My twelve-month goals are to maintain balance at Rove while expanding the brand to other states and possibly internationally.
Currently, we are in the final stages of R&D to infuse our Drink Loud with Live Rosin. Edible rosin is a fast-growing market for good reason, it provides a full-spectrum experience in edible form.
I am also researching the potential for CBG eye drops. I’ve had success in microencapsulating the CBG to allow it to blend with water, but the formulation and process still need work. My father lost his vision in his right eye due to glaucoma, and ever since I’ve looked for ways that cannabis could help others struggling with what he did.
Photo Courtesy of Rove
Warren Bobrow: What is your favorite food to complement your creative extractions? Do you have a go-to restaurant that you want to share?
Chris Marroquin: I go for hydrating fruits like watermelon, passionfruit, mangoes, and berries. I tend to eat in excess when complementing with extracts, so I keep it light and hydrating to remain productive and maintain mental clarity. As far as favorite restaurants, I love Garden Grill in Las Vegas. It happens to be vegan, and my favorite thing on the menu is its crispy chicken sandwich and beer-battered avocado tacos. It’s my favorite sandwich, vegan or not.
If we are talking about a bigger meal, say after enjoying several joints or a cannagar, I like to start with a palate cleanser because I know instead of getting “fuller” my appetite will increase. If I’m consuming live resin or rosin it’s a lot easier to go with a richer dish, such as croquetas or a ribeye steak. With edibles, I like to keep the dishes light and nutritious until I’m ready to ‘give in’ to the edible and eat something heavier, like lasagna or pasta.
Warren Bobrow: What is your passion?
Chris Marroquin: I love to garden and cook. It’s about the experience for me, whether it’s growing heirlooms/rare genetics of a plant/fruit, or learning a new cooking technique. The most recent cooking skill I’ve been learning is Mornay sauce. It’s basically a béchamel sauce with grated cheese. I love nachos and this is the perfect consistency of nacho cheese sauce. It’s a pretty basic technique but I just recently learned both. It’s so satisfying for me to learn new techniques and then make a beautiful meal using the best ingredients.
Warren Bobrow fell in love with cannabis long before he took his first sip of alcohol. But when talent with mixing earned him the moniker, “The Cocktail Whisperer,” alcohol took center stage in his career. As Bobrow puts it, “I was a pretty established drinker—people would come to me and say I made them the best drink they’d ever had.” But swearing off the hard stuff in 2018 has allowed him to bring his true love to the fore without sacrificing his passion for intoxicating concoctions. Now, the only cocktail whispering Bobrow does involves cannabis, his go-to secret weapon for the perfect drink.
Before Bobrow became a world-renowned cocktail connoisseur, his dream was to become a chef. But as he is quick to point out, he started from the bottom up. “I’ve worked plenty of the least glamorous jobs in the industry,” he says, recalling his first job washing dishes in York Harbor, Maine. “Working as a dishwasher teaches you to work hard and be diligent and treat people exceptionally well, because you never know when they’ll come back into your life. Always, always be nice to the dishwasher.”
The grunt work paid off when Bobrow trained as a chef and started his own fresh pasta manufacturing business. He lost the business in 1989 after Hurricane Hugo, and was deep enough in debt to accept the necessity of a twenty-year detour in banking–though he hated every minute of it. In 2009, he took the chance to reinvent himself. “I took some classes with the New School in food writing and became a published food writer,” says Bobrow, referencing his tenure with publications such as Saveur Magazine. “Then that led to six books on cocktail making, and it seemed to work out very, very well for me.”
According to Bobrow, his foray into writing didn’t necessarily turn down the pressure of the service industry. “My publisher only gave me a month for each of my books,” he says, cheekily suggesting that if you can’t write 160,000 words in a month you have no business in publishing. “But I’ve been writing magazine articles all over the world, so that’s easy for me.”
Asked how he comes up with his recipes, he just shakes his head. “I dreamt them up. I sleep on my successes—everything that I come up with is delicious, I just can’t explain it.” Of course, not all of his material was dreamed into existence—in his 2013 book, Apothecary Cocktails, Bobrow drew on the centuries-old history of herbal concoctions for curing ailments. He argued that drinks like the Milk Thistle Spritz or Lemon Balm Gin and Tonic do more than just intoxicate—they heal.
When a promotional tour for one of his books took him to the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, which featured a temporary exhibit on the history of medicinal cannabis, something clicked. He began to see that his beloved potions didn’t need to involve liquor, a substance which no longer felt medicinal to him. “After seeing the exhibit I knew immediately what I was going to do with the rest of my life,” he says. The deal was sealed when he enrolled in the New Jersey medical program and successfully used cannabis to treat a terrible case of glaucoma that had been plaguing him for years. In 2016, Fair Winds Press published Bobrow’s Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails & Tonics.
Now on its tenth printing, the book contains tasting notes and descriptors that illuminate the medicinal and recreational aspects of the plant. Recipes often combine cannabis with alcohol—though with caution—but are focused on cannabis. In addition to cocktails and mocktails, the primer contains basic recipes for butter, oils, tinctures, and creams, followed by a plethora of fun and healing ways to apply the infusions.
Of course, making a craft cannabis cocktail from scratch is a whole lot of work, and it’s perhaps best left in the hands of the master himself. So it’s no surprise that as cannabis beverages storm the market, Bobrow is throwing his hat in the ring to show us how it’s done. Enter Klaus, a craft cannabis cocktail company named for Bobrow’s Internet-famous traveling “1850s German drinking gnome,” who apparently now agrees that cannabis cocktails are to be preferred.
“It’s not like one of those seltzers that, you know, people are chugging to get stoned,” Bobrow insists. “This is a carefully composed craft cocktail that’s made with love and non-industrialized ingredients.”
The cocktail currently on offer is called the Mezzrole, named for Mezz Mezzrow, a jazz clarinetist who earned his notoriety in the Swinging 20s for being the weed dealer to Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Bix Beiderbeck. The ingredients include Pickett’s Hot N’ Spicy ginger syrup, Les Vergers Boiron Lime, and Fee Brothers Bitters. And Bowbrow is careful not to offset the medicinal aspects by overloading the drink with sugar. “I’m very sugar-conscious,” Bobrow says. “Added sugar is a big problem in the liquor industry, so we’ve only added 6/10 of a gram of sugar.”
And of course, as the star of the show, the cannabis is just as lovingly selected. “I’m using an emulsion created by a company called Virtuosa in Oakland, California, a cannabis-infused nanotechnology based on coconut oil,” he says. “It’s a beautiful product that gets you really high.”
For the time being, California is the only market that can benefit from his potions, and even then supplies are limited. “This is carefully, carefully crafted with small run, small producer products that are not industrialized—we’re not making 20,000 cans, we’re making 5,000 cans,” he says. Though he hopes to increase his reach eventually, at the moment Bobrow is content to be clamored for. “There’s nothing wrong with saying that you have the best tasting beverage that no one can buy,” Bobrow says. ”But eventually the market is going to demand it.” At least Bobrow hasn’t left us completely without recourse while we await the day we can pop open a can of Klaus. In the meantime, we can flip open Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails & Tonics to try our own hand at a cannabis concoction—if only to better appreciate the beverage when it arrives.
The Topography of Visual Positioning Via Experimental Videos
Entrant Company: MAMUS Creative
Medium: Social Media | Category: Single Platform
City / Country: Tampa / United States of America | Year: 2022 Play
Credits
Entrant Company: MAMUS Creative, Tampa Public Relations Agency: MATTIO Communications, New York Design Company: MAMUS Creative, Tampa Chief Creative Officer: John Mamus / MAMUS Creative Creative Director: Masako Di Dio / MAMUS Creative Illustrator: Danilo De Donno / MAMUS Creative Website Development: Bob Plaskon / MAMUS Creative
This Clio Cannabis 2022 Bronze winning entry titled ‘The Topography of Visual Positioning Via Experimental Videos’ was entered for Klaus by MAMUS Creative. This piece was submitted to the Social Media medium within the Single Platform category. It consists of 1 video and 10 images.
City / Country: Tampa / United States of America | Year: 2022Play
00:53
02:04SettingsPIPEnter fullscreen
Play
Credits
Entrant Company: MAMUS Creative, Tampa Public Relations Agency: MATTIO Communications, New York Design Company: MAMUS Creative, Tampa Chief Creative Officer: John Mamus / MAMUS Creative Creative Director: Masako Di Dio / MAMUS Creative Website Development: Bob Plaskon / MAMUS Creative Illustrator: Danilo De Donno / MAMUS Creative
This Clio Cannabis 2022 Silver winning entry titled ‘1960s-Inspired Packaging for the Modern Era’ was entered for Klaus by MAMUS Creative. This piece was submitted to the Brand Design medium within the Packaging category. It consists of 1 video and 10 images.
Klaus;The Most Colorful Cannabis Beverage on the Shelf
MAMUS Creative
Entrant Company: MAMUS Creative
Medium: Brand Design | Category: Brand Identity
City / Country: Tampa / United States of America | Year: 2022 Play
00:00
02:17SettingsPIPEnter fullscreen
Play
Credits
Entrant Company: MAMUS Creative, Tampa Design Company: MAMUS Creative, Tampa Public Relations Agency: MATTIO Communications, New York Chief Creative Officer: John Mamus / MAMUS Creative Creative Director: Masako Di Dio / MAMUS Creative Illustrator: Danilo De Donno / MAMUS Creative Website Development: Bob Plaskon / MAMUS Creative
This Clio Cannabis 2022 Gold winning entry titled ‘The Most Colorful Cannabis Beverage on the Shelf’ was entered for Klaus by MAMUS Creative. This piece was submitted to the Brand Design medium within the Brand Identity category. It consists of 1 video and 10 images.See all 2022 winners
