October 26, 2016, at 6:19 p.m.
Peanut butter and jelly, butter and toast, bud and booze. There are somethings that just go together, and now one enterprising California winery has teamed up with a local dispensary owner, and the duo is hoping to capitalize on the idea with their brand new line of marijuana-infused wines.
Cali Only…For Now
Louisa Sawyer Lindquist and Lisa Molyneux have taken to calling their new wine variety “Canna Vine”, and are bringing their advertising campaign to social media where they hope to capture as many customers in their home state as possible. There is, however, one major problem that stands in their way: the law. As it turns out, not just anyone can get their hands on a bottle of their uniquely colored, green tinted wine. To snag a bottle, one needs to first be a resident of the state of California, and also needs a marijuana permit.
If this didn’t already limit the customer base, the cost might be even more prohibitive for some potential buyers. Depending on the brand, a bottle of the stuff runs between $120 and $400.
Celebs Are Getting In On The Biz
The potential for profit, however, is still there, and is attracting even more potential competitors into the market. Even folk singer and cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge has decided to throw her hat into the marijuana-infused wine arena, producing a line of her own called Know Label. Etheridge seems to enjoy sampling her own product too, saying, “There’s a little flush afterthe first sip, but then the effect is really cheery, and at the end of the night you sleep really well.”
Believe it or not though, despite this recent upsurge in interest, pot-wine isn’t actually anything new. In fact, according to some reports, it has been used in religious rituals in several parts of the world for centuries. Everyone from the ancient Greeks to the early Christians are suspected of using some kind of laced wine in their rituals, and archaeologists uncovered evidence that the ancient Chinese might have even used a wine fortified with cannabis resin as an anesthetic as far back as 2800 B.C.
For those of you who do happen to be residents of California, and do happen to be in possession of a marijuana permit, have a drink for us still stuck in the more aggressively anti-marijuana states, and revel in a small sip of forgotten history. Until the rest of the country can get behind an idea like this, this author is left to look on, green with envy.
Cheers!