DELINEATING THE FUEL SPECTRUM

Welcome to the Good Weed Board on StratCann, part ten! In my last column, we presented the Twelve Rules of the OG Rating Guide. In Part Ten, we are proud to introduce a new classification tool: Delineating the Fuel Spectrum. In this piece I also theorize about the potential for cannabis-specific geographic indicators in British Columbia.

So, what is the fuel spectrum? People have been trading cannabis for a long time. But even the most devoted old heads are typically working with inconsistent lingo. The term fuel is used to describe a subclass of cannabis flower commonly found in North America. But what does this term even mean? By the conclusion of Part Ten, we aim to have a better understanding.

I grew up in the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Calgary, not too far from the Trans Canada Highway. When I first started learning about herb in the late nineties, the culture in Alberta was clandestine. There weren’t many options, with access to only a few different kinds of bud. Most of the good flower came from the Kootenay region, or the Okanagan Valley in BC. Rarely was it dispersed with a name.

Back then, we learned to distinguish batches mostly by visual traits like red hairs, purple hues, or crystal formation. Occasionally an aroma like skunk or fruit was described. The growing side of the industry was veiled in secrecy, while dealers and smokers had to keep it low-key. Resources for learning more about the plant and its broader history were limited.

In 2005, I moved to Victoria. On the island, I started to encounter varieties that were named. The West Coast scene was more advanced than back at home. Their culture was more rooted. Industry still relied heavily on street trade, with just a few compassion clubs sprinkled around. But unlike anywhere in Alberta, cannabis was accepted by the common society on the coast.

Cultural acceptance existed elsewhere in British Columbia and set the stage for networks to develop, which facilitated trade and enabled the exchange of information. With the right connections, a smoker could gain reliable access to more than just a few different kinds of bud. For me, this new world was highlighted by classics like Blueberry and Grapefruit.

I gradually discovered legendary varieties like Jack Herer, God Bud, Island Sweet Skunk, and White Widow. I prized various kinds of Kush, from the OGs and Pinks, to Purple, Master, and Bubba. On nice days, I smoked Sour Diesel and Super Lemon Haze. Every new sample expanded my knowledge.

At the turn of the decade, traditional cannabis markets were thriving in BC. But change was coming. In 2013, the MMPR established a federal framework for licensing producers. Health practitioners were empowered to prescribe cannabis for various ailments, and the medicinal regime was underway. Brick-and-mortar retail exploded on the coast, in contrast to customary street dealing. Before long, there were hundreds of grey market dispensaries operating throughout the province.

At first, the future looked bright. No,w distributors could partner with retailers. Consumers with a script could finally buy weed in a semi-regular store. Dried flower still dominated the market, with extracts steadily improving as a category. Instant classics emerged like Blue Dream and Gorilla Glue #4. It seemed like the legacy of BC Bud was being enhanced. But new-age disinformation was brewing.

Without enough old-school mentors, relationships became fickle in the new age. Apprentice breeders began to lose touch with the lineage of their starting materials. Brokers increasingly targeted batches based on trends and hype. It was only a matter of time until the average consumer learned to prioritize flawed analytics.

As the industry forged on, oversaturation caused market prices to tank. Innovation became the priority, and novel product formats were popularized. Soon, the market was flooded by thousands of unremarkable selections. Sadly, by 2018, with adult-use legalization looming, the traditional market had peaked in western Canada. Even in British Columbia, the distinct culture was beginning to fade.

Today the reality is even more dire. Juvenile companies act like institutions, while our industry forgets its roots. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Conversely, wine culture is sophisticated. The language has been preserved over decades, even centuries. The same applies to other social substances like coffee, spirits, beer and even tobacco.

Think of Burgundy. This famous wine-producing region in France maintains a classification system that was formalised in the 1930s. Decoding the AOCs by Vins de Bourgogne summarizes: “The wines of Bourgogne are classified into 84 Appellations d’Origine Contrôlée. From appellations Régionale to Grands Crus, they guarantee the authenticity of the region’s wines in terms of the terroir where the grapes were grown, the way it is made, following certain precise steps, and local savoir-faire, born from traditional methods that have been improved over time.”

Or consider the Denominación de Origen Mezcal, established by the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property in 1994. Tim McKirdy explains in All the Different Types of Mezcal: “The Consejo Regulador del Mezcal currently allows production in nine different states. There are three legally defined mezcal categories. Each category dictates the methods and equipment producers can use to make the spirit.”

A similar approach has been applied to Belgian Saison ale, Islay Scotch whisky, Ethiopian Sidamo coffee beans, Vuelta Abajo Cuban tobacco leaf, and many others. These varieties can be traced back to the source through a familiar combination of attributes. Their communities have preserved knowledge over generations, therefore enabling honest discourse with ethical trade.

It’s not so different from the idea of BC Bud. Renowned worldwide for more than thirty years, there are several key regions within the province that have performed a lion’s share of the production. And much of the starting materials in each of these regions are akin. We are known for producing narcotic, fuel-dominant varieties. In fact, only a few hundred original cultivars have probably been produced in the region. Most of them are similar yet distinctive.

Yet there has never been a cohesive strategy for documenting regional cannabis annals or preserving the languages of cannabis. Our culture has been siloed from the outset, with essential knowledge withdrawn to the shadows. So, how do we bring a sensitive history to light in the modern age? I think it’s important that we honour tradition by prioritizing how to describe and classify the actual flower again.

With this in mind, in 2020, I created the OG Rating Guide and the Good Weed Board. I imagined a VQA-style grading system for dried flower. I believed such a resource would be useful in documenting the contemporary market and ranking the products available. I hoped it would inspire other critics to look beyond simple analytics. But what our community really needs is a compass. Beyond open discourse, we need tools that help us identify and communicate about all the different kinds of herb.

To develop accurate tools, we must recognize what came before us. We need to honour our heritage. There is a grassroots movement of cannabis trailblazers here in Canada that has existed for at least the past fifty years, especially within key areas of British Columbia. Before embracing a new age, we must document regional history and trace lineages back to their source.

Maybe the best way forward is to recognize terroir and establish official appellation of origin zones: geographic indicators for BC Bud. In doing so, we could signal these communities as agricultural hotbeds, identify their history, and begin to showcase the properties that make each of their distinct growing regions remarkable.

There will be skeptics who are doubtful that the concepts of appellations and terroir can be applied to cannabis in British Columbia, especially when the vast majority of cultivation is accomplished using indoor or greenhouse-controlled environments. But the definitions may still hold true.

A Guide to the Key Appellations of Burgundy by Hedonism Wines describes an appellation as: “A legally defined and protected geographical indication which determines where grapes can be grown and regulations concerning permitted grape varieties, pruning, yields, harvest, ripeness levels and production methods.”

Meanwhile, Terroir translates to a sense of place. “The French conception of the word generally comes down to recognized natural environment-related factors,” writes Randy Caparoso in A Practical Definition of Terroir and Why It Matters More Than Ever. “Where the definition gets tricky is the fact that vineyards, like wines, involve direct human participation. Viticultural and winemaking traditions typical of regions or eras are often considered part of any region or vineyards terroir.”

Similar to grapevines managed in a viticulture setting, the expressions of any given cannabis plant will vary depending on a garden’s location, tech and style. Controlled gardening environments still utilize a range of inputs that lead to varied results. In British Columbia, the predominant styles of growing, the cultural input, and the strongest stock have evolved from region to region, creating distinctive and identifiable stories for each.

Organizing our communities won’t be easy. But wine culture is there to guide us. Established in 1990, the BC Vintners Quality Alliance is the appellation of origin and quality standard for wine in the province. Wines of British Columbia determine that: “BC VQA certified wines must meet standards with respect to their origin, vintage and varietals. These wines are assessed by a qualified panel and must meet the criteria for quality characteristics before they can be designated as BC VQA.”

The Wines of British Columbia now has 22 official Geographical Indications (GIs).  The Province of BC is the primary GI, and there are nine regional GIs and 12 sub-GIs. It should come as no surprise that these GIs often overlap with well-known cannabis producing hotbeds.

A parallel framework would be transformative for BC Bud. Assembling the key production regions of the province would help ensure their cannabis is recognized around the world for both quality and sense of place. We could begin to validate notable home-grown varieties. Think of France’s AOC laws, where the best wines are identified by where they are grown.

If the first step is to honour our heritage by documenting history, we next need to train the future stewards of weed. If sommeliers can identify winery and vintage from a blind tasting, then ganjiers should be able to sort out cultivation facts during a sampling. But terpene charts aren’t going to cut it. We need better resources like wine, coffee, spirits, and beer all have. Cannabis deserves its own essence wheel.

Essence wheels and flavour maps have benefited sommeliers, baristas, bartenders and tobacconists by helping them identify, sort, and describe characteristics of the offerings they curate. The language used in these resources has been documented and preserved over time.

Consider the Wine Aroma Wheel created by Dr. Ann C. Noble at UC Davis in 1984, or the Whisky Tasting Wheel, first developed by the Scotch Whisky Research Institute in 1978. The Specialty Coffee Association Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel was originally published in 1995. But the inspiration for this project is painted on a wall at Habit Coffee on Yates Street in Victoria, BC.

We are making progress, showcased by the Flavor Wheel from Green House Seed Company, or the Flavor/Scent Wheel from Confidence Analytics. These tools provide a visual representation of the many scents associated with cannabis. But they don’t quite capture the building blocks of herb in North America.

Meanwhile, modern-day cannabis marketing encourages consumers to focus on the top three terpenes. But flavours are complex. Nature is nuanced, and synergy is a real thing. It’s called the entourage effect. Interactions between all the secondary metabolites in a sample must play an essential role in the end profile.

Amanda Breeze breaks it down in Everything You Need to Know About Esters: “Terpenes in weed get the most attention because they represent the highest volume of scent molecules and are the most straightforward to test for,” she says. “But there are other chemical families in aromatics. For example, volatile sulfur compounds are the chemical family that produces the skunk smell. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the ester family, responsible for some of the sweet-smelling fruity aromatics in the buds.”

Abstrax Tech dives deeper in the white paper Flavorants vs. Flavonoids. Figure 1 illustrates the complexity of cannabis by showing the chemical breakdown of secondary metabolites in a typical sample. The many aroma compounds include terpenes and flavorants such as esters, alcohols, aldehydes, heteroaromatics, ketones, and cannasulfur compounds.

Yet the most advanced industry testing practices overlook many of these compounds. Common labs don’t even have the machinery or baseline standards required to begin testing for them. Which means the most sensitive tools we have to diagnose cannabis profiles are still our human senses. After all, the nose knows.

Maybe to create an adequate essence wheel, we need to simplify first and reduce the profile to basic elements before expanding. Where to begin? Trailblazers know it starts with fuel as the baseline. To classify further, fuel must be recognized as the foundation for most kinds of weed in North America.

The term gas, one component of fuel, is familiar in the modern age. Yet pioneers will tell you that gas is just skunk from back in the day. Many contemporary gassy varieties have skunk in their lineage. But while closely associated, the characteristics aren’t exactly the same, nor do they encapsulate the breadth of the fuel genre’s influence over cannabis. So, how do we delineate the fuel spectrum?

Iain Oswald and the team at Abstrax are working to uncover the chemical origins of the skunk aroma. Their paper titled Identification of a New Family of Prenylated Volatile Sulfur Compounds in Cannabis concludes that: “The primary compounds contributing to the skunk scent are a family of volatile sulfur compounds, with 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol correlating most strongly with the aroma of 13 cultivars.”

We just need to remember that laboratory analysis of compounds is only one part of the equation. Flavour experience is what resonates over time. From a tasting perspective, weed critics should be able to identify the intricate layers of any given profile. But diagnosing cannabis flavours can be complicated, especially when the most influential notes aren’t necessarily what you notice first.

“Flavours are the combination between aroma and taste. They are characterized by the presence of top, middle and base notes,” explains Azza Naik in Flavour and Sensory Perception. “The aromas that you notice first are top notes. Think of fruity aromas such as citrus, berry, and pear. Middle notes appear after the burst of top notes. Imagine floral aromas or mild spicy scents that give body to the final flavour. Base notes linger long after the top and middle notes disappear. These intense aromas are known for their long-term bouquet in a product.”

In the world of BC Bud, base notes comprise the first layer of the fuel spectrum. The traditional skunk has evolved to include gas and diesel. These are the three pillars. Diesel is positioned on the far left, skunk at the centre, and gas on the right end of the spectrum. We can begin to differentiate between these three pillars by sorting commonly associated flavours and layering them next to these base notes.

Top notes complete the second layer of the spectrum. On the far left is citrus. Citrus transitions to earthy at the left of centre. The origin is musk, a devoted companion to the skunk profile. Right of centre is sweet, which transitions to creamy at the right end. Citrus can be fruity sweet. But sweet on the right is baked goods, dessert sweet.

Imagine the spectrum as a graph with three tiers. Base notes are the first tier and create an X-axis. Top notes are the second tier, which can be rotated clockwise 90 degrees to form the Y-axis. Middle notes headline tier three, with examples attached for each. Diagonal lines in each quadrant can represent tier three.

Here is a visualization of the first edition Fuel Spectrum. Relying on this formula, we hypothesize that more than 60% of dried flower samples in North America locate in quadrant one or four, approximately 25% in quadrant two, and less than 15% in quadrant three. (Image credit: Overgrown Gardens)

That’s all for Part Ten. Thank you to StratCann for publishing this column. My readers can check out the list of Good Weed Board rankings and find links to my written pieces at the Overgrown Gardens website. Happy blazing!

Marty Wig is a contributor for StratCann. He is the co-founder of Overgrown Gardens, creator of the OG Rating Guide and the Good Weed Board

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