Category: Interviews

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Confident Cannabis: Excelsiors in Transparency

Confident Cannabis CEO & Co-Founder Steve Albarran speaking at craft cannabis competition Cultivation Classic in Portland, Oregon.PHOTO CREDIT: CONFIDENT CANNABIS

What attracted me to cannabis, initially, wasn’t the feeling of being stoned— far from. It was a curiosity about the plant because I’m attracted to cannabis for the effect it has on my brain. You see, it makes me smarter. After all, no dummy writes and publishes books or makes a living being a writer. It’s challenging enough to put pen to paper, and actually say something that resonates with the reader. Cannabis and the intellects that use this much maligned plant, sit in the catbird-seat of entrepreneurship. None are more intriguing than the individuals that can actually change the highly stigmatized world of canna-intellectualism. I find this part of life fascinating, and I want to share this very personal energy with my readers.

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Aster Farms’ Unique Terroir Emerges from the Ashes in Wine Country

Julia and Sam during harvest PHOTOS PROVIDED BY ASTER FARMS.

Aster Farms’ Unique Terroir Emerges from the Ashes in Wine Country

I’m fortunate to have real farming in my blood from growing up on my family’s Demeter / Bio-dynamic / Organic / Gentleman’s farm in Morris Township, New Jersey. The idea and concept of using soil as an extension of the interactive, living earth with the planets above, pulling the entire thing together in a cohesive and forthright manner, is very personal to me— even though my part in the whole thing was very limited. But the concept of farming cannabis attracts my attention because it’s real. Farming, whatever you are growing is massively hard work. There’s no sleeping-in “because I’m tired” days. No days off. While growing up, my responsibility was to care for a working stable with very demanding horses. Horses eat 24/7. Their stalls need to be cleaned constantly, it’s just what you do. That was my job. School was part of the story, too. It wasn’t easy for me, far from. There’s always a job to do on a farm.

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Bayflower Cannabis Company: Be Free

In The Pines WARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

Covering cannabis at the top of the line in quality, and all within the journalistic side of the cannabis business has certainly opened my taste-buds to a broad array of flavors and ‘terroir’ that I thought only existed in the wine world. It’s truly eye-opening to imagine all that time that I spent tasting fine wine growing up, only to discover in later years a much broader array of flavors like wine, inherent to cannabis. I discovered many similar attributes to fine wine, and vice-versa. Descriptors such as crushed minerals, fruit salad, pine forest, sap, salt-slicked could all mean different impressions of fine wine from around the globe. Now imagine taking those same and even more descriptive language when it comes to cannabis tasting notes. Such as the new catch phrase, terpenes. Imagine my delight to fall into a series of samples from Bayflower in San Francisco. Not that I was in San Francisco, (I wasn’t), but close enough in Eureka (a few hours up the coast), is where I experienced their own unique terroir; quite literally, the taste of the place. Here I had in at my disposal some of the most gorgeous locally grown, (legally, of course) cannabis. And suddenly as if by osmosis I had several lovely new samples from Bayflower!  Wonderful!  Thank you!

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WE MADE IT TO FORBES!

…And it’s a love letter to the Bull Run Lifestyle.

In a land far away in New York City, where people are awoken by car horns, have their clothes professionally cleaned and check the DOW industrial average while brushing their teeth, they dream of a simpler life. To them, the Oregon lifestyle is a fairy tale. The sap that comes from our trees is a thick and vibrant viscoses that courses through the veins of our forests, gushing with life. Our air is crisp and clean, with the soft, rustling sounds of leaves and animals rolling in the gentle breeze, and everything that is grown and cared for is nurtured by the love and light that keeps our land going. And, according to Forbes writer Warren Bobrow, our cannagars capture it all.

Photo credit: John Plummer

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Cocktails to Mocktails: How Cannabis Beverages Changed My Relationship with Alcohol

by Sophie Saint Thomas | CULTURE | 

While some people recovering from substance abuse do best with a zero-tolerance policy regarding any intoxicant, others are able to safely use cannabis. I’m one such person, and my life is all the better for it.

In Humboldt County, California, near some of the most beautiful outdoor cannabis farms in the world, I sat with friends in a loft in the town of Eureka and sipped a delicious drink. There was no alcohol in the grapefruit infusion. There was, however, cannabis in the mocktail; it was created by mixologist Warren Bobrow, author of Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails & Tonics: The Art of Spirited Drinks and Buzz-Worthy Libations.While he still enjoys wine with dinner, Bobrow says he’s just about quit hard liquor since diving into the world of cannabis cocktails, which he began exploring after getting arrested for smoking a joint in New York City during the Giuliani era.

“If you smoke a joint in public, everyone knows your business,” Bobrow says. “But not if you are sipping a gorgeous Vietnamese Iced Coffee with THC-infused condensed milk on a steaming hot day, watching your coconut water ice melt slowly into the unctuous concoction. Do I have you here?” While the world has become a friendlier place towards cannabis users since Giuliani was mayor, yes, he did have me there.

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Above, mixologist Warren Bobrow

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Darren Gacicia: Discovers Something Unique At The Garden of Eden

I’m fortunate in this journalism world to be able to find interesting and intellectually driven people who work within the cannabis space. Entrepreneurs who are every bit as nerdy and metric driven as myself, with myself, less metric driven. Just one of those things when you’re comfortable being different than the norm. Cannabis attracts all sorts of intriguing people and Darren Gacicia is definitely up there with the entrepreneurial minded. I came across Darren in a circuitous manner. His PR for the Garden of Eden line of exceptionally high quality cannabis oil products had contacted me on a different project. She saw my manner of interviewing, it is somewhat different than the other kinds that are out there, that is for certain, and we pushed forward on this discussion. The questions followed along with phone time. But what I really was intrigued about was the fact that Darren grew up in the near proximity to myself, and he went to prep school at the other prep school in my town- for boys; The Delbarton School. Which I grew up, directly next door to, thus my deeper interest in Darren’s deep success and especially that he graduated from an extremely conservative, Catholic, Private Boys School. The only other people who I knew at Delbarton, were my cousins (not Catholic) and a handful of others over my Morristown-Beard years in the 1970’s. I really hadn’t thought about Delbarton much in some time and this nerdy factoid certainly caught my attention!  Without further interruption, may I introduce to you, someone who is obviously doing exactly what he loves in life. I cannot find anyone more passionate than Darren Gacicia, obviously doing what he loves in the cannabis industry. Hard working too. No one gets to be a financial go/to for a capitalized corporation without being just a bit more than smart.

Touchdown!PHOTO: CHRIS ROMAINE

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When Your Bar Works With Your Kitchen

Do you work with your kitchen?  I know, asking for them to order lemons and limes, grabbing some grapefruits, begging them to freeze some large cubes?  No, that’s not what I’m leading to. I mean putting your kitchen to work for your bar. What? There is a little secret that makes all chefs happy. It’s named food cost. When it’s too high, your chef is angry. He’s not making any money and whatever little money he does make for the owners is being thrown away. Not good for you, nor the restaurant.

 

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Beyond Organic: Bringing an AOC to Luxury Humboldt Cannabis

Outdoor Grown at Sunrise Mountain FarmsWARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

Terra Carver, the eloquent and peaceful Executive Director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance is waxing poetic about the fine wine-like Terroir of craft cannabis to a group of broadly smiling Canna-Tourists. They are smiling and utterly enraptured by the gleaming, sunlit day, the long-tables groaning with hand prepared, fanciful appetizers and locally crafted Humboldt artisan breads and oozing, succulent cheeses. They sit enveloped by the aromatics of some of the finest craft cannabis that is grown anywhere in the country. Truly the taste and the aromatics of the place surround and deepen each breath. An experience so overwhelming that most people have never seen anything like this before and they sit, awestruck in the face of such beauty. This is a Victory Garden of outdoor growing. An experience of the the ‘highest’ order, and it is what we have come to see at Dave and Lorelie Sandomeno’s Sunrise Mountain Farm. Row after row of this lusciously scented craft cannabis fills the eyes and the nasal passages with vast bursts of spicy profusion. Terra is explaining with a smile, how the craft cannabis business is certainly to overtake fine California wine in overall sales in just a few short years. But can they accomplish what wine has accomplished with Terroir? That is her goal, to create an overall quality level that demands the greatest price, just like wine demands. In fact in the couple of years that her organization has been guiding local cannabis farmers, they have attracted the attention of the statewide organization, The California Growers Association.

Papa & Barkley JeepWARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

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Meet The Daily Leaf: Doing What They Love and Creating a Living Doing It

The Daily Leaf’s Stephen Gold & Andy Yashar PHOTO CREDIT: SAM GEHRKE

If you take a few seconds away from the day-to-day journey that most people take, from wake to sleep, there are very few opportunities to do what you love. That is especially true on the East Coast of the USA, where the search for success often clouds over the chance to actually do what you love.

 

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Alex Shah of Solo Sciences and the Independent Verification Mark

Alex Shah at WorkPHOTO COURTESY: ALEX SHAH

Editor note: Recently I had the rare opportunity to share ideas on the telephone with one of the most intriguing individuals I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to in recent memory. Alex Shah is that person, and he is brimming with enthusiasm and purpose. He is highly conversational, and our interview went into all tangents, but what intrigued me the most was his passion for creativity and even cooking! It is through conversations that surround food that I find the deeper meanings in life. Not only work, but what makes us tick. And that is through the love of food. I saw, very clearly, that this man is not just a thinker. He’s a theorist and a creative being. Photography, food and life, not a bad way to work, doing what you love. It’s crystal clear that Alex is a success in whatever he sets out to do.

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