There are high-end weed products out there. High quality wax, concentrates, and edibles for discerning customers exists. Certain dispensaries also specialize in higher quality product. I enjoy many of these myself as legal weed in my area is still much cheaper than alcohol and I prefer the product.

Wine has had a stable market for centuries with products aimed at many customer segments, high and low quality segments included. Weed is just beginning, and the biggest customer segment by aggregate demand will be the undiscerning customer. Thinking otherwise is silly IMO.

>discerning

I have serious gripes with the high end market in the dispensary. For example, Stiizy will sell you a gram of distillate in a cartridge for $60. It's the exact same product as the one being sold in that same dispensary for $20 from a brand with less instagram presence. Distillate is pretty much commoditized. Also the entire $60 1/8th market is absurd to me, it seemingly exists for people who assume price means quality because at the end of the day, its not significantly different than the stuff being sold for less than half as much, but it might come in a nice glass jar with a sexy lid instead of an opaque plastic bag.

Then if you start growing yourself its like seeing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, with how much excellent weed you can produce in a few months with little investment or effort beyond what you'd do for a tomato plant. It will honestly look better too being hand trimmed and cured versus trimmed by a trim bag facing whatever the commercial growers do to cure it into a tiny, dry rock hard nug (probably good for scaling the process but its ugly to me).

I guess you can say this is true for just about any luxury product though. There are people that say wild turky or knob creek is a lot better than much more expensive whisky some people chase after.

Hah yeah these complaints are pretty similar to other luxury markets. I've always found Stiizy products to be more brand than actual substance. I'm also into coffee and roast my own beans and the same things apply to the coffee market. My home coffee roasts are similar quality to 3-4x more expensive bags of coffee at specialty roasters. I can even buy cups of coffee there which is still 2-3x more expensive than a cup of coffee I can brew at home with the specialty beans I bought already roasted. It's just how luxury works, it's some mix of quality, branding, and finding a customer segment willing to pay the markup to not do it themselves.

I am not sure what state you live in but $60 for an 1/8 is way above what one could expect to pay for "top shelf" bud here in Washington. But then again we currently have a "weed surplus" and it seems every store has a 30% sale off twice per week.

I am in Socal. Sure theres a wide range, something like is typical at just about every dispensary here but this is from just one dispensary:

$73 3.5g testing at 22% https://embed.getmeadow.com/organizations/1328/products/1176...

$20 3.5 testing at 32% https://embed.getmeadow.com/organizations/1328/products/8834...

MedMen is even worse with their top shelf prices, you probably won't find any $20 1/8th there and I keep a wide berth of those places myself.

Massive fraud as well even from legit actors, stiizy for example is being sued for faking lab results

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2022/12/08/698377...

This brings questions up about contaminants for me

Raw garden too has been sued in a class action suit over terpenes misrep.

I agree be the wizard and make your own potions.

High-end tobacco exists as well, and you can also pay hundreds for a Cohiba cigar or a carton of Chunghwa cigarettes, but for the vast majority of smokers out there Marlboro is about as fancy as it gets.

> The cannabis boom seems to have been predicated largely on the assumption that it would resemble the high-end wine market, with expensive vintages, "budtenders", etc that can support lots of boutique farms and retailers.

I don't feel like founders, employers, consumers or anybody standing nearby ever believed that.

But founders had to convince investors.

The difference between pretty good weed and the best weed is irrelevent when you throw the bud into your grinder, unless you are buying moonrocks (kind of like battering fried chicken, the bud is dipped in high thc% oil then kief). It's not like a whisky where you get this whole tasting experience and can taste the wood of the barrel it sat in; to my tongue at least smoke is smoke unless its the terrible brick weed that I have not seen in 15 years. Even then with so much excess product being produced by growers, moonrocks would not be expensive to produce.

Smoke is smoke, but vapor is not vapor.

You can taste a lot more when you stop burning the plant and I think that's where the industry needs to go if it wants to develop that way

There's not a great vaporizer product for dry herb unfortunately that doesn't cost hundreds, plus they are mostly "session style" vaporizers where you preheat an oven and are expected to vape it all or else a lot is wasted. There's the vapecap and copies that are more "on demand" like a normal pipe, where you use a butane torch to heat up the device each hit, but they don't work well for people with a higher tolerance and take quite a bit of technique from what I've read. With my experience with a pax too, these things are picky about being perfectly clean or the taste will change, the airflow will be poor, and the switch for it will be gunked to the point the device can't even turn on if its not stored standing straight up at all times. I was also disappointed with reddit's favorite the mflb which has a few inherent flaws (batteries degrade fast and its just not nearly as strong as smoking for whatever reason).

It seems like a market ripe for disruption to be honest, the undisputed king among non portable vaporizers at least is still the volcano vaporizer which came out over 25 years ago. I think that's why distillate cartridges are so popular, because they avoid all these issues dry herb vapes seem unable to work around. They don't smell very much at all compared to a dry herb vape, they are cheap, they have no maintenance issues or learning curve, and they are on and off with a click of a button.

The Airizer Air Max is an incredible solution for on-the-go vaping, but unfortunately not exactly cheap.

The volcanoe from storz and bickel was great for a time. But not ideal for health.

The problem with these types of vaporizers is that they can inadvertantly introduce contaminents to the body. This is largely fungal and bacterial matter that can infect the lungs as it is not destroyed fully in the heating process.

Be careful even with tested weed.

I can recommend the Storz & Bickel 'Mighty' (by same makers as the Volcano) — perhaps plus a pack of spare parts / accessories (so one can postpone cleaning of the cooling / top part of the unit).

Although, sure, it is expensive, as you say, but it's very good. And no matter how gunked up the top cooling part of the unit might get, it will never not turn on/off. I don't find the maintenance of the unit to be a big deal (particularly having an extra top /etc), but as always with such things, YMMV.

Great observation. I think people without a ton of experience with weed fail to appreciate just how different it is compared to alcohol. Back when weed was illegal I used to have a joke I would make with dealers. I would ask them what the strain of the weed I was buying, and usually they would tell me it was some Sour Diesel Purple Hurple Haze Hybrid or whatever (they were making it up on the spot most of the time, I'm sure). And I would then ask "Will it get me high?" and everyone would laugh.

The joke being that these days it's all the same stuff. It's either complete shit weed (which is rare) or high potency modern bud that is all basically interchangeable. I personally have never even been able to detect a real difference between sativa and indica, let alone individual strains. Does some of it taste kind of different...sure? But smoking something or even vaping it is just fundamentally a different experience. It's not food, it's clearly a drug. It's in your mouth for like a second max. Tolerance works differently too, unless you are a daily, habitual user you're not sitting there puffing on a 90% THC weed pen for hours. One puff and you're fucked up. But you can have a glass or two of wine and feel mostly normal, even for someone who doesn't drink often. You can sip on it.

So IMO all of this had led me to the same conclusion as you. The market is headed for complete commoditization in no time. I have a friend who works for Altria and she was saying even 10 years ago they were planning for complete legalization and to dominate the market once it happened. The growing fields were already purchased back then.

> I personally have never even been able to detect a real difference between sativa and indica, let alone individual strains

This is interesting to hear because I have the opposite experience. I used to have really bad anxiety and weed was (and still can be) a trigger for it. I took a few years off weed and only starting trying it again since legalization in Canada (and now Thailand). I have definitely noticed that I feel best on something that is under 20% THC, with at least 1% CBD. I also am doing more experimenting with different terpenes and am pretty sure that also has an effect on how it makes me feel - limonene for example seems to be the best for getting the "euphoric" high. This makes sense as there is some research to indicate that terpenes from other plants (such as lavender) can have a positive impact on anxiety.

In terms of indica vs sativa however, I do think the distinction is largely overblown (from what I have read) and those are usually just proxies for the cannabinoid ratios (with sativa usually being higher THC etc and indica higher CBD etc.)

So from my experience and from what we have seen with coffee and beer I can agree that we will see commercialization first (like the Starbucks and Molson/Coors era) but I think that as weed becomes more normalized and more people get a feel for the differences in strains, preparations etc. we will see a shift back towards more "craft"/small farm interests like we have seen with beer and coffee in the last few years.

It's a great point that the cannabinoid ratio has a dramatic effect on the high. Ever since high CBD:THC oils became available in cartridge form, I personally switched ratios in the 15-25:1 range. This is like 2% THC, but likewise I find I get all the benefits of smoking "regular" weed or high potency carts without feeling uncomfortably high or anxious at any point. You can "sip" it. I think finding your preference along this product dimension will definitely become more of a thing, because the difference is real. And while I don't have a favorite terpene or anything, more differentiation there feels plausible too.

That said, I still think the big difference between coffee/wine and weed is that finding your optimal drug dosage is a fundamentally different human experience to tasting food and drink. Imagine if all alcohol tasted the same and the only differentiator was the exact type of drunk it made you. It's hard to imagine the same sort of culture emerging, where people are flying to foreign countries to taste wine or lining up outside their favorite brewery for new beers. Flavors are subjective, same as drug effects, but they are also sharable. You can hand someone a glass of wine and ask what they think. You can't hand someone your sense of reality and ask them if they are tripping out in the same way.

Tobacco really is a great comparison, eg. cigarettes likewise claim to compete on taste/subjective factors like "smoothness", but in reality nobody is hunting down 2012 Vintage Marlboros. Maybe an analogy to the high end cigar market could emerge? A product variant intended for less habitual, slower but more refined enjoyment?

I haven't ventured much into the high CBD territory yet. I'm going to see what I can find when I am back in Thailand in March but might have to wait to be back in Canada as Thailand medicinal is still very early days.

> and those are usually just proxies for the cannabinoid ratios (with sativa usually being higher THC etc and indica higher CBD etc.)

As a medical user in the UK, I don't believe this to be the case - I believe these terms are more like proxies for the terpenes than the cannabinoids; you can have two strains with the same cannabinoid content, yet they can have completely different effects.

> I believe these terms are more like proxies for the terpenes than the cannabinoids

Do you have some info on what terps tend to be associated with sativa and which with indica? This is an interesting point if there seems to be a pattern!

Unfortunately in the UK medical market, clinics/dispensaries/growers don't have to provide patients with terpene profiles. Still, some CoAs (Certificates of Analysis) are made available, and the rest you can sometimes figure out from the likes of Leafly.

For me, I'd say terpinolene, limonene and pinene tend to be dominant in the stimulating sativas I've had, where caryophyllene and myrcene take their place in indicas.

But it's no simple challenge, as non-dominant terpenes exert an influence too - and there can be dozens of them. And just to make it an even harder problem, it also seems to vary to some degree from person to person.

I seem to recall seeing Leafly's data in Kaggle, might be worth a look if you want to dig in!

Maybe it takes some time to get to know the different strains and how they feel. I mean, I cannot tell the difference between different wines because I am not experienced in that, I can mostly say that this is shit wine and this is good wine.

But with this plant, the different strains definitely have different effects, and if you compare a strong indica vs sativa, the effects are very clearly different.

I mean, it is a plant that affects your mind and body, if you spend a lot of time with that you get to recognize the definite differences. The way the grower also handles the plants seem to have a difference, so it can be very sensitive if you have sensitivy for that kind of things.

Personally I agree on that the race to increase THC levels in the plants is not the best way, I mean I would be more happy if there was a race to create balanced strains, instead of trying to maximize the "blast you in the face" high THC buds. Like you said, sipping on good balanced strains is a much better experience at least for me, than just getting blasted to the moon with these modern strains coming near 20-30% THC content and almost no CBD.

I would guess that all this focus on strains speaks to the extent to the extent to which pot is just never going to be like wine.

With wine and beer, the ingredient varieties do impact flavor, but, realistically, they have nothing to do with the price a product can command. There's $3/bottle Cab and there's $300/bottle Cab. The difference in price is ostensibly down to the amount of skill that goes into the production of the final product, not just the grape variety.

I have a hard time imagining that can happen to a significant extent with cannabis. I'm guessing there's not as much room for a discerning palate to pick up on and enjoy subtle terroir distinctions in a product that you consume by setting on fire and inhaling the smoke. Nor do I see as much room for artisanal skill to appear in the final product. Making wine involves careful balancing of a variety of factors in order to fine-tune how an active biological process alters the characteristics of the final product. Cannabis? I'm pretty sure the process ranges from drying it and packaging it up in plastic baggies, to tincturing it and mixing the result into candy. I just don't see as much room for fine craftsmanship in either option.

Not saying there's none at all. Just that I have a hard time seeing how there's enough of it to support much of a very high-end luxury niche to the industry the way you see with booze.

Nor do I see it working out like tobacco where you at least have a (small) minority of cigar and pipe smokers who are primarily interested in the flavor of the smoke. But it sounds like cannabis is now so strong that it's difficult to consume any amount of it without becoming intoxicated. Which I would assume makes the development of a proper connoisseur culture around it about as likely as a connoisseur culture around 90% grain alcohol would be.

Well, who knows, the legalization around the world is still relatively new, and mass markets are being tested, so when for example more of Europe legalizes cannabis also, different and more varied markets are going to come alive.

But for example medicinal cannabis like Bedrocan was developed to be a very clear and non-intoxicating strain, and you can definitely feel the difference in that vs homegrown varieties, so there is definitely an art there that is still to be explored by the big markets.

Who knows, wine and beer industries have existed for so much longer. With cannabis I understand it's the same thing, there is a lot of fine tuning in how you give nutrients, light and the environment, it affects both the taste and the effect. Also indoors vs outdoors has a different effect, so for sure there are a lot of variables in play that can be tuned.

My hope is that slowly the mass legalization will be going towards in giving the people the strains they need, some need more relaxing, some more activating, some more pain nulling and so on.

Also, smoking is not the best way anymore, vaporizing or eating is the most efficient way. High quality vaporizers the effect is much more medicinal, than smoking it, same way is when you eat it.

Maybe you have not tested a high quality vaporizer? with those the flavor and effect is much more clear, the smoking gives you an intoxicating effect from jus t inhaling smoke into your lungs. With a high quality medical cannabis and vaporizer, the effect is very medicinal, it can be almost non-intoxicating especially when used for a longer period of time.

Too bad this stuff is still illegal in many places. The illegality has most probably been driving the need to pack a lot of punch into as small amount of weed as possible, hopefully the legalization process will lead into more milder variants and strains being developed.

I've smoked almost daily for over 30 years. Can't tell any difference whatsoever between sativa and indica. It's routine now going into one of these fancy weed places and having them ask me this first and I have to find some way to politely say 'yeah, they're no different for me, sorry'. The junk science around weed is so cringey.

Yeah, I actually find it pretty unbelievable that even in legal states where the business has been around over a decade, you still get these pseudoscientific claims about potency or effects. I wonder when the industry will "grow up" (no pun intended).

Well, have you considered that the daily smoking has made you numb to the effects, or your tolerance is so high that you don't anymore feel the effect ?

I get more number to the effect also while tolerance develops, I can only imagine what happens after 30 years. I definitely don't use weed daily, it would kill my productivity completely, but when I do after long periods of being sober, the sativa vs indica difference is so clear that seems pretty silly to even discuss about this.

You can "sip" on a vape regardless of produce potency. Set the temperature to 185°C and suck gently, turning it off as soon as you taste it. Then vibe for a moment and get a feel. Increase temp by +2 degrees and repeat. This precisely avoids getting fucked up from one puff, and allows you to enjoy the gradual intoxication.

CBD, the calming, antipsychotic compound vaporizes at a lower temperature than THC, the compound that gets you high. At 185°C you're getting mostly a bodily soothe, while 230°C has you hitting the deck and spaceing out.

I don’t want to come off as pedantic disagreeing here but as a degenerate pot smoker for the last 15 years I definitely can tell the difference. I actually never understood wine tasting and it’s subtleties until I started picking up on the same notes in my herbs.

Sure, back in the day lots of stuff was made up. But now I genuinely do get a different taste and high depending on the strain and I can usually tell the difference between certain kinds. Also, for very popular buds like Sour D I can ID by the smell alone. In the end it is just different terps, I know. And while I prefer Indica (“in-da-couch”) I do recognize some of the different effects could simply be psychological and not physical. Alas, I am big fan of medical grade sensi and the sincere peace it brings to my life (it is a boon for treating seizures). Anywho, just my two cents, have a good one!

That's what the venture capital involved seemed to expect anyway. There was a VC bubble for the industry, and some really crazy brands were showing up. Brands where you could buy your weed along side an order for a $15,000 dollar leather horse saddle, golden glassware, crystal ash trays or other expensive trinkets. Farm tours and taste testings emulated the wine industry to a tee. They were 100% banking on a premium clientelle. Does such a clientelle actually exist in enough quantity to support that industry though I wonder? Surely there was market research showing it might?

>Surely there was market research showing it might?

Yeah of course, it was done along side the crypto due-diligence