Weed and wine together as one

Last week, at a hoity-toity wine tasting in Nob Hill, my sommelier cousin looks at me and goes: “Cuz, have you tried weed vodka?”

I stifled a laugh from echoing throughout the stuffy room and answered: “I haven’t, is it any good?”

She responds: “Um, it tastes like straight weed. But weed-infused wine, that I’ve got to try.”

I blinked at her in a state of amazement.

WEED-INFUSED VINO?! Shut the front door.

My curiosity was confirmed by Michael Steinberger’s article in The Daily Beast: Marijuana-infused wine is definitely out there, and it is gaining popularity up in wine country.

Evidently, there are a number of wine-making wonders who are mixing California’s two favorite recreational crops.

Crane Carter, president of the Napa Valley Marijuana Growers, tells Steinberger that the bulk of the marijuana used comes from none other than California’s own Humboldt County. He said that the pairing of pot with the vino from the Stag’s Leap district is especially tasty.

If you’re Stag’s Leap drinker like me, you’re never going to look at a bottle of their wine the same way ever again.

Infusing wine and weed dates back several decades, especially since drugs have been a silent presence on the wine country scene since the 1960s. But weed wine is believed to have become a California commodity in the 1980s as a bit of a speakeasy-style rival to President Reagan’s war on drugs, selling for more than $100 a bottle.

The high price makes sense, seeing as how the recipe for ganja wine consists of a full pound of marijuana added to the fermented grape concoction. The end product ends up with about a gram and a half per bottle.

A Daily Beast source known only as “Bud” recommends leaving the mixture in the barrel for nine months before bottling for the perfect blend of grapes and dope.