The man who created a sommelier-type program for dissecting, grading marijuana

Wine has its sommeliers, cheese has its mongers and coffee has its cuppers. Could weed have its “interpeners”?

The Trichome Institute, a provider of cannabis education and certification, developed a methodology it calls Interpening™ — used to identify, understand and grade cannabis quality by interpreting the plant’s terpenes and flower structure.

“The terpenes produce smells and these smells are very detectable and these detectable smells have a pharmacology,” says Max Montrose, Trichome Institute president. “And so Interpening is beyond necessary because we are suffering from the strain name dilemma. In Colorado, we have 250 types of Blue Dream because 249 of them aren’t Blue Dream.”

What was a black market industry has exploded with zero regulation on naming and identifying variety types, he adds.

“We teach people the tools to see and smell how cannabis will affect you psychotropicly and also if it’s acceptable enough to ingest in the first place,” Montrose says.

Montrose joins Cannabist editor-in-chief Ricardo Baca on The Cannabist Show to explain the process of Interpening, why strain names should not be critical to cannabis shopping and what THC percentage really means.