First Class Gas, Is Cannabis its Own Love Language, or is it All Love Languages?

When I first met the very lovely owners of Canuvo during my first industry 420 in 2022, I had a very simple question for them, but for which I had expected a complex answer. Instead I received what might be the most cliché and simple answer imaginable. My question was: How do you get such distinct aromas in your strains? And their answer was: Love.

We had a good laugh, and I asked what I thought was a follow-up that played along with our little joke: So you play music for them, and speak sweetly to them, and care for each individual plant? And they said that yes, they did. And while the tone of the conversation stayed light and friendly, there was an ever so subtle shift in their affect, and I knew they were being completely serious.

I don’t recall if they confirmed or refuted the specific signs of affection like music and loving words, and I would never intend to out someone’s professional secrets without their consent, but I feel that it’s safe to share that the folks at Canuvo in fact treat their plants with the love that they indeed feel toward them. Now if that means rockwool or organic compounds or whatever, I can’t say. But the secret ingredient – at least – is apparently love.

As I sat down to write about my first Canuvo review – two and a half years after that interaction, as I didn’t start the blog for another year, and by that point we had far less Canuvo in our store – their words and the lasting impression of their sincerity came back to me, and inspired me to dip into the connection between cannabis and how we show those closest to us that we love them.

So the five traditional love languages are Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. There are a number of alternative Love Languages out there, some more serious than others, but I’m going to stick to the original five. Here are some thoughts:

I could do a deep dive into all the ways in which cannabis can be infused into the ways in which we show each other affection, but unless I was going so far as to explore the biochemical science behind it, it seems that for the purposes of this post, simply illustrating some ways in which cannabis is organically part of how we treat each other well is sufficient to make my point. It kind of reminds me of a t-shirt I haven’t seen in a while, but always stuck with me. It’s a simple design, text with or without an accompanying graphic, that just said:

Technically, the only things that make me happy are dopamine and serotonin.

And if there was a picture, it was usually an illustration of those two chemical compounds like you’d see in a chemistry textbook, but with happy faces.

Dopamine, https://scienceofparkinsons.com/dopamine/

Serotonin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin/

Anyway, onto First Class Gas, this week’s strain! I was really happy (thank you dopamine and serotonin!) to see Canuvo back in our menu. As I mentioned at the top, the folks at Canuvo are wonderful people, full of love and joy, which they share with the community in the form of some really excellent cannabis. This all started with asking them how they achieved such incredible aromas (now I’d be all technical and ask them about the terpene profiles), and First Class Gas brings me back to that. I’m not normally a gassy guy (unless you ask my kids, har-har-har), but this one is, well, classy. 

I was a little underwhelmed at first by the nugs themselves. Not disappointed, by any means, but they were fairly plain seeming. The colors were consistent, if a little pale. They were smallish (not smalls-small, just smallish), soft but not fluffy, solid but not dense. They looked a bit frosty, but weren’t that sticky. They pulled apart easily in a way that had me wondering about how cured they were. As I’ve mentioned before, some cultivators tend to cure some strains longer than others, typically indica-heavy strains, so I was curious about the moisture content of the bud and how it would smoke. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

But the aroma brought me back around 100%. Like I said above, gassy isn’t normally my favorite aroma in cannabis, but this one really lived up to its name. It’s gassy, but in an intensely clean way. Even though she wasn’t going to be smoking it, I asked my wife to smell it, because I knew she would be able to nail the description I was looking for, and she did. “It’s the smell of the office at a [mechanic’s] garage, with wood paneling from the 60’s, but it’s been kept pretty clean.” Disaggregating that perfect illustration of the overall aroma, I picked out notes of wood, sweet fruit, coffee, herbs, and pine beneath a clean (not diesel) gassiness.

The smoke was not acrid at all, as I had feared a bit, given the aforementioned moisture. It was a bit heavier than average, but it was clean and very smooth given its heft. The flavor was excellent too, stripping away the brighter tones of the aroma, leaving light flavors of gas, musky earth, and a truffle-y quality that I found both a bit surprising and very satisfying.

A coworker had previously described the high as so stony he feared he needed a nap after smoking this strain, but I found that even though I was smoking in the evening, I didn’t feel that kind of heaviness. This isn’t to refute his experience, simply to give a range of effects one might feel from First Class Gas. My high was very heady, stony and uplifting, a touch euphoric and thought-provoking, but also with a throughline of what I shorthandedly call “giggly” in my preset notes, but I would broaden in this case to the kind of joyfully engaged that I was prone to tempered bursts of laughter where I might have normally just chuckled. The body high was a calm heaviness that was comfortable on the couch, but I didn’t at all feel stuck there. I felt relaxed, if a bit hungry and thirsty.

In summation, this is a delicious and aromatic indica, moderately potent with an excellent high, both joyfully uplifting and calmly relaxing. Canuvo is fully back on my radar, and I look forward to grabbing some more of their flower soon, so keep an eye out. I hope you enjoyed reading (or at least I hope you enjoyed a dopamine and/or serotonin boost). Have a love-ly week, everyone.