Before I preview this content great episode, I must explain the naked structure of what you are about to experience. This episode will have no musical interludes between segments. We are currently searching for a new logo design, new interstitial music and maybe a few bars of a theme song. So if you are a composer or designer, or who have a composer or design friend who might like to enhance our show with their tunes, please reach out to Show@bravenewweed.com. We’ll give on air credit, an interview and as much love as we can in other ways in return. You may also notice that this blog contains no graphic branding, which we are also overhauling. If you have ideas/skills or friends with ideas/skills, hit us up.

Finally, by now you know that we are expanding the topics we cover to include brave new plants and brave new substances that are being used in brave new therapies to help create brave new minds. Your response to these topics has been overwhelmingly supportive, so we’re diving in deeper and to bring you the smartest, most engaging experts on these high minded topics. So, lay back and enjoy this stripped down episode. And in the meantime, here's a blurb on what weed can learn from wine. (Hint: a lot). -- Joe

"Biology, geography, botany, culture, linguistics. Weed is like wine -- it’s not about one single thing. You have to learn about a set of things together. That's what makes them both so beguiling." 

That's Matt Montrose, parter at OMvino, a San Francisco Bay area marketing and communications agency that specializes in food, wine and wellness brands. Matt started out in the hospitality business at age 19 and moved through ranks of the Court of Master Sommeliers, and earned his CMS Advanced Certification at just 25 years old. He knows of what he speaks!

Matt is joined by his always engaging cousin, Max Montrose, founder of the Colorado-based Trichome Institute, to talk about what a very new industry, cannabis, can learn from an older industry, wine. Both industries are built on complicated plants that defy easy categorization, primarily because they grow in the ground and are influenced by soil, climate, and the skills of their farmers. Trying to sell them in simple categories such as "sativa" and "indica" is disingenuous at best and in many case, dishonest. "At a cannabis sommelier level you can see and smell how a particular variety is going to make you feel on a sedative to stimulating spectrum," he says. "That's important because lab testing doesn't test for sedation or stimulation. Nor does it test for quality. People need to be educated to stop shopping for THC levels and start shopping for aroma."

Unsurprisingly, both Montrose's have a lot of opinions about how to teach customers to get the best out of both of these amazing plants and their derivatives. Listen in!