INTRO

It’s Squid Pants here looking at another offering featuring grape scents and tastes. I like grapey weed, the problem is I’ve never had any cannabis that was as grapey as the first grapey cannabis I ever had. Closest I’ve come is Platinum Grapes from Organicraft and let’s be honest, we all knew that this was going to be a comparison to everyone’s favourite legal grape offering.

Now that I’ve used the word “grape” so many times in a short period that most readers will have hit the point that it doesn’t even seem like a real word anymore, let’s begin.

BC BLACK

BC Black is a brand who package multiple growers products. They usually say who the grower is on the package and on their website. Indeed if you look at recent listings for this offering you’ll see most people claiming it’s from Okanna. However on the package the grower is listed as “Micro Cultivator British Columbia”.

I shot an email to them with a few questions and heard back quickly. Hearing back from any cannabis producer or packager has become increasingly rare the last few years so huge props to them for this. My questions were focused on the genetics, which I cover next, and who the grower was, covered here. They declined to say who the grower was, they have their reasons I assume, saying only it was not Okanna this time around and instead it was a small grower who recently came over from the legacy side. So, a bit of mystery but nothing sinister.

GRAPE POP ROCKS

The parentage of this variety is listed as Grape Stomper X Pop Rocks. Grape Stomper was very easy to track down and the breeder there is Gage Green Genetics and the ancestors are Purple Elephant (described as a Purple Urkle hashplant) x Chemdog Sour Diesel. Pop Rocks was the head scratcher as there are several different lines with that name that have greatly varying ancestries. BC Black said to their understanding it was the Pop Rocks from Envy Genetics (Fruity Pebbles x Blow Pops) used and that this hybrid in particular was originally bred by a legacy grower in Kelowna, and further since it had been brought in from the legacy side all they could do was take the breeder’s word that those were the parents of this offering. From what I saw and experienced I have no doubts that it’s exactly the ancestry they claim.

PACKAGING

I had written a long rant about how ridiculous the testing stats were on the package, and went into detail on why I regarded them so. Then I decided that a long rant about significant digits and genetic potential and all that was a rant best saved for a different forum. Instead, you can look at the pictures of the package in this review to see what the claimed numbers are, and keep in mind that I had such little faith in them for multiple reasons that in the end I decided they weren’t worth mentioning. Instead I’ll tell you that yeah, you can smell the terpenes listed, the grape scent and taste is not due to any terpene so it doesn’t tell you much about that aspect, but no one is testing for aroma compounds that aren’t terpenes. Finally, to me the potency was middling.

Anyway, ummmm, there’s a humidicant pack, which is seen as good or bad by different people so I’ll only say that there is one in there. This was packaged on January 11th, 2023 and I opened it 89 days later.

LOOKS

Looks are very nice. The package consisted of 3 large buds that feature bright orange stigmas against rich green with dark purple accents. Trim is by hand and shows the surface details as well as trichome coverage quite well. Buds come to a point with a wide base. Shape is only marred by having been a little flattened in the package.

FEEL

Feel is very dense and under compression there is little bounce back. Again I would note there was some flattening of the buds in the package so my impression of the density may be a little flawed. Grinds nicely with even, fluffy grounds. Rolls nicely too if you are a joint roller.

SCENT

Very concord grapey on opening with more than a hint of myrcene. In general this offering is not loud, but if you let it sit in a container for a bit you do get a nice grape whiff.

Just an aside, the grape and cherry scents are so close in reality that one basically decides if they are smelling this as grape-y or cherry-y purely by the suggestion from the name as to which scent it’s supposed to be.

Grinding brings a burst of grape but that fades to the earthier terpenes after a few seconds.

TASTE

Volcano: Here it’s pretty meh; earthiness is there but no grape tastes make it over unless you push the temperature hard. With use fades to a pleasant earthy composition, but it’s a fast fade. Low longevity, taste fades to nothing quite fast.

Joint: It rolls nice but little punch to the taste. If you want the grape taste to come through you need to roll thin and draw fast to get the highest temperature at the tip, otherwise it’s just a mild, earthy taste. Burn is quite clean.

PRICE AND VALUE

I paid $42.00 for 3.5 grams from Edition X on Dupont St here in Toronto. That works out to $12.00 per gram.

So, how about value. I really wanted to like this, and I don’t hate it. Yeah it’s pretty mild but I don’t actually mind that. It’s grapey, but that fades fast on the nose and is hard to detect on consumption.

In a world where Organicraft Platinum Grapes exists and is available for about the same price, there’s no value argument here regrettably.

CONCLUSIONS

It’s not bad, but it’s not great. Nice clean combustion implies a nice clean grow, and the product looks and smells great, but taste/scent magnitude and potency are both lacking if I am being honest. I was really impressed with BC Black as a company and their responsiveness to me as a customer, in fact I am looking to try more under their brand soon, but that doesn’t make this cannabis better than it is and for $12.00 a gram I do indeed expect a bit better.