Shortly after the first hash pairing, the bright high hits me. I go silent and get lost in the scene—the light glistening off the water, the spectacular red expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the short bell-like dings and creaks produced by boats rocking in the harbor. My host Sarah Jain Bergman notices my silence and laughs. She can tell this hit got me lifted. It’s a beautiful spring day in the San Francisco Bay, and we’re dabbing a selection of incredibly flavorful hash rosins. Bergman, who has built a personal brand as a hash sommelier, is curating the experience, pairing blueberries with Z x Strawnana. The combination tastes like a fruit smoothie.
As a hash sommelier, Bergman marries the flavors of cannabis concentrates with food. Like wine sommeliers present wine and food pairings so that fine diners can experience all aspects of wine appreciation, Bergman is a connoisseur of all things hash. She doesn’t drink, but she’s a supertaster when it comes to terpenes—where the flavors and aromas of both hash and wine originate.
“I appreciate flower, but concentrates are where it’s at for me flavorwise,” she says. “With concentrates, it’s just a cleaner, clearer high. The flavor, it’s just more pure.”
The cannabis flower for the Z x Strawnana hash rosin was grown by Mendoja Farms and processed by West Coast Alchemy. In cannabis these details align with understanding both a grape grower and a winemaker when it comes to enjoying a bottle of wine.
Cannabis concentrates isolate the resinous glands (the trichomes) on the cannabis flower, where terpenes and cannabinoids are located, and remove them from the plant material.
“I find that the plant material sometimes gets in the way of the pairings,” Bergman says, explaining why …
Read More
Author: Ellen Holland / High Times
