Creating a Culture of Cannabis Connoisseurship

At Budist, our core mission is to celebrate the people, producers, and places that define our cannabis culture and heritage, and to bridge the knowledge gap that currently exists between consumers and brands. One primary way we advance this mission is by creating what we call “a culture of connoisseurship”. Put simply, this means fostering deep product appreciation through consumer education, tasting experiences, and insightful product reviews.

We are here to elevate the conversation by redefining our relationship to the plant in ways that explore the nuances and highlight the remarkable features that make each product and producer shine. We believe this approach will allow consumers to more meaningfully discover the products that are best suited for their lifestyle needs.

What is Cannabis Connoisseurship? 

The textbook definition of a connoisseur is a person who has a high level of knowledge and appreciation for a particular subject, such as art, food, or wine. Connoisseurs are often experts in their field, with the ability to judge and appreciate the quality of an item. The word connoisseur comes from the French word connoisseur, which means “expert”. It is related to the Latin word cognoscere, which means “to know”

At its heart, connoisseurship is about appreciation of the fine details, the little factors that add up to create a great or excellent product. Connoisseurs go beyond hobbyists, joyfully diving into the intricate nuances of things like aroma, flavor, and texture. 

Connoisseurship is nothing new – one needs only to look at the wine or coffee industry to see how vibrantly connoisseurs here are leading the way, driving consumers from confusion to appreciation.

Moving the Cannabis Industry Forward

Connoisseurship moves niche industries forward. Consider craft beer, coffee, or wine. Lovers of these products have shared not only their passion, but their knowledge with the public in a digestible way that makes it accessible for an average man or woman to go to the store, look at their abundance of options, and understand the differences. Who else but a coffee connoisseur could break down the differences between Sumatran and Ethiopian beans? Who but a craft beer connoisseur could make the differences between an IPA and a double IPA understandable? 

And now, Budist is bringing forward connoisseurship in cannabis to change the industry and elevate the conversation around cannabis products. 

For decades, cannabis has been written off as a “weed” dominated by THC potency, with little else to offer the world. How short-sighted! Prohibition’s ripple effect of increasing THC potency has caused us to take a myopic look at this multi-faceted, truly incredible plant. But as legalization spreads across the country and markets like California mature, we are seeing a shift. Customers want more than overly simplified indica/sativa/hybrid labels with 25%+ THC — they want to truly understand the cannabis products they’re consuming and how they can most effectively serve their desired use cases, be it recreational, medical or spiritual.

Focusing on quality, craftsmanship, and product efficacy can elevate the conversation. Rather than viewing cannabis simply as a means to an end (to get high), we shift our attention to the meticulous production methods and techniques that yield a vast array of nuanced flavors, aromas, and effects this plant is capable of.

Budist: A Social Review Platform

Budist is the world’s first social review platform in the cannabis industry, dedicated to elevating the conversation and deepening product appreciation through insightful ratings and reviews.

We empower consumers to review products on the same level as professional critics, using a 100-point rating system. Our Budists, made up of certified Ganjiers, competition judges, journalists, tastemakers, and connoisseurs, lead the way, bringing their unique perspective to cannabis appreciation. 

Connoisseurship is as much about education as it is about appreciation. Well-informed consumers make better decisions in dispensaries and evolve deeper emotional attachments to their favorite products. Cannabis has been so maligned and warped that it is only education and appreciation that can shift this narrative. Education on the plant ultimately drives demand for high-quality artisanal products, which in turn rewards producers for their dedication to craftsmanship. 

Budist is more than an app for product reviews: it is a place where people who love the plant can connect and converse. Through digital media such as reviews, product discussions, and conversations, we can foster community. In-person events like cannabis tastings and workshops help us turn that community into a place where we push the cannabis conversation forward.  

Celebrating Craft Cannabis Cultivators and Makers

Not all cannabis products are created equally. At Budist, we celebrate craftsmanship. Cannabis can grow under many conditions, but getting this plant to thrive takes a careful and experienced touch. 

Just as winemakers are celebrated for their wine quality, cannabis cultivators who grow incredible flower using meticulous and sustainable production methods deserve recognition. Their contributions to the cannabis industry set the benchmarks for quality products and encourage healthy competition between growers. The same holds true for cannabis extractors, formulators, and makers. 

However, creating high-quality products doesn’t always mean using the most expensive methods, sustainable practices, or labor-intensive techniques. Nor does it require small-batch production. Large producers with a more scalable approach can also achieve high levels of quality, which is essential for consumers seeking consistent, cost-effective options. While these products may not reach the pinnacle of craftsmanship, they offer great value for those who want quality at an affordable, everyday price. This quality-to-price ratio—known as QPR in wine—is a key factor for consumers, as it helps identify the best products at lower price points, where most purchases occur.

Cutting Through the Noise with Peer-to-Peer Recommendations 

In our digital age, people still trust the word of people over brands. Connoisseurs, speaking from an educated and passionate perspective, help improve the quality of cannabis products on the market with word-of-mouth or written reviews and active community participation. Honest and insightful reviews are one of the best ways to highlight the quality of cannabis products, by celebrating the good and calling out the subpar. 

Budist empowers both professional critics and everyday consumers to raise their voices and share their cannabis experiences. We’re democratizing cannabis appreciation and crowdsourcing the wisdom of those who have insights and recommendations to share. This is why we decided to use a dual-score rating system, similar to popular movie review sites like Rotten Tomatoes. This system empowers everyone to participate and share their voice, and it enables consumers to make the most informed decisions by comparing insights between everyday consumers and professional critics.

Cannabis Can Learn from the Wine Industry 

Cannabis, like wine, takes so much of its expression from the soil and the conditions that it is grown in, making the producers of this plant of the utmost importance. 

Wine has been made for thousands of years and yet it was as recently as the 1970s and 1980s that a true appreciation for the subtitles of the varietals began to come into the collective consciousness. Robert Parker, esteemed wine critic and founder of The Wine Advocate, was one of the first people to detach wine reviews from the production of wine and bring it directly to the public. His easy-to-understand 100-point rating system revolutionized wine reviews and made it simple for a wine drinker to understand the quality of their wines. 

Parker relied not on, as previously done, the reputation or prestige of the vineyard itself, but on the quality of each bottle of wine. It mattered not how esteemed a vineyard was if their wines were subpar, and he was never afraid to call out quality at too low of a price. He called on vineyards to let their grapes come to full maturity, reduce wine filtration, and use stainless steel fermentation tanks, among other things. Even the backlash against Parker furthered his impact as critics sprung up to disagree with him and explain why. Today, you cannot separate the wine industry from Parker’s impact. 

Wine is analogous to cannabis for many reasons: the impact of the soil in unique geographical regions on the end product, the suitability of certain cultivars to certain regions, and the necessity of careful, hands-on cultivation to name a few. The complexity of the bouquet of flavors, the subtle differences between the aroma and the taste, and the presence of unusual flavors continue the list of similarities. 

But unlike Parker, the cannabis community has the benefit of being a community. These conversations do not develop in silos solely based on a single person’s preference, but with others, agreeing and disagreeing while always connecting on their shared love of the plant. 

The impact of a culture of connoisseurship extends beyond individual products. Cannabis connoisseurs transform a market with their expectations of excellence and efficacy. This ripples into better cultivation methods, innovative products, and higher standards to meet this demand. It also helps to create a more diversified retail shelf, allowing craft and premium brands to sit alongside value and corporate brands. 

Budist is the catalyst for this transformation, as a space to foster this culture of connoisseurship, led by cannabis experts and continued by cannabis lovers.