420 All Month: Purple Diesel x Cookies

Shhh… I’m going to let you in on a little secret about budtending. The names of cannabis strains may sound ridiculous and random, but once you know a few key terms, you can extrapolate a lot of what a strain may smell/taste like, and what the effects are likely to be, from a lot of those silly names. Let’s look at today’s strain: Purple Diesel x Cookies. First and foremost, the “x” tells us that the strain name is already just a combination of two other strains, so some sort of Purple Diesel and some sort of Cookies strain. Think of purple strains you know; what do they mostly have in common? The things that come to mind for me are some common aromas or flavors, like grape, mango, herbs, or a pungent fruitiness. Common effects include light giggly head highs, and more relaxing sometimes sedative overall effects. What about diesel strains? Flavorwise, that classic gassy or diesel-y aroma, and effects-wise I think of a stony, heady high mostly. Cookies also has some common flavors from one to the next, including anything baked-goods like cookies or cake, and the highs tend to be pretty well balanced, leaning toward a more gently euphoric chill.

I saw this strain pop up and thought two things: “purple,” “diesel,” and “cookies” are rarely the things I’m seeking out in cannabis that is just for me (as opposed to strains I’m trying specifically for work or this blog), and “I trust this grower implicitly at this point, the THC is pretty high, and this sounds like an interesting combination, so I must try it.” It certainly didn’t hurt that almost as soon as we got it at the store, the counterpart I’ve mentioned before whom I rely on for takes on strains I haven’t tried yet gave it his thumbs up. All this, and I love trying strains that I have an immediate feeling of “I see you, I know what you’re about” when I see just the name or maybe the lineage and jump to some assumptions. I love testing my hypotheses.

I fondly recall my time as an English teacher, but one thing I think most teachers at least profess to abhor is grading piles of essays. It’s not that most of us don’t like reading or nit-picking (I love both!), but that the average studentload at least around here for a full time high school teacher is like 120 students, so that’s a shitload of papers if they all come in around the same time. But my point is, sometimes I’d be grading/assessing an essay, and all the individual components were exactly as they should be, formulaic perhaps, correctly and effectively used, and the grammar and syntax and all were basically error-free, and on standard 4-point rubric or grading scale, that would all warrant a 3 out of 4, which is communicating that everything was at it should be. A 4 would mean that some aspects went above and beyond expectations, typically in ways that are prescribed, showing that the student brought something insightful or unique to the essay. The vast majority of those essays where all the individual parts are 3’s feel like writing that meets expectations, but a few here and there somehow are so finely crafted that even though all the individual criteria are 3’s, the essay feels like a 4, feels like it exceeds the expectations of the assignment. The sum is somehow greater than the parts.

All this was said to highlight that Purple Diesel x Cookies somehow met all of my expectations perfectly, and still managed to exceed them as well. Does it smell like and feel like a purple? Yes. Does it taste like and hit like a diesel? Yes. What about a cookie? Yes to all. Let’s dig in.

These chunky nugs are an even pale green with a bit of purple undertone and clusters of brown pistils mostly at the top of the bud. They’re lightly frosted with trichomes and a little fluffier to the touch than expected. They’re a little more cured than they look, and beneath the dry fluff they’re pretty dense. The aroma is largely floral at first, with clear but light notes of coffee and bread dough beneath. It’s like burying your face in a fresh bouquet of flowers at a bakery: there’s no mistaking that you’re smelling flowers, but those flower have been marinating in bakery smells all morning, and so there’s no ignoring that those very pleasant odors are infused into the floral overload.

It hits pretty well, with a medium-bodied smoke that is buttery on the way in and just a tad spicy in texture on the way back out. The flavors shift a bit from the aroma, losing the floral tones and bringing out the pungent diesel characteristics, whereas the dough warms to a rich buttery flavor. It’s a really nice sensory shift. Sometimes the bittering of the flavor comes across as muting or otherwise making the aromas of the flower less pleasant, but in this case it’s more of a transformation to something different than a destruction of something good.

The high was also predictable, but then surprising. I’ve written before about how I naturally structure my thinking about most things in terms of narrative. What’s the story of this thing, or how does this thing fit into the story in which the experience of it is embedded? The high of Purple Diesel x Cookies has its own narrative arc. It first hits with a moderately thoughtful kind of stoned, where I’m back to the conspiracy theory boards I’ve mentioned a couple of times. My brain was working overtime deconstructing the plot and visual cues and character motivations and myriad potential red herrings of this show I’ve been watching with my wife. She’s been taking great pleasure it seems from soberly asking me what I think is happening or what I think is going to happen regarding the finer points of the story, and then watching as I fall into each different high I’ve been experiencing recently trying to talk my way through one of the most subtle mysteries I’ve seen on tv.

But then, after all this was said and done, once I had rambled and re-rambled, explained, contradicted myself, looped back and around and through my own spoken-aloud thoughts, when I would settle down and relax, the more calming and sedative side hit me like a brick to the sleep center of my brain. I went from a mile-a-minute gears-spinning stoned to struggling to motivate myself to get up and go to bed. I hate falling asleep on the couch by accident, and I struggled to avoid that as this high started to come down a bit. So yeah, this both met my expectations, and then slapped me in the brain and body by exceeding those expectations by the end. It was awesome.