THE ’POT SOMMELIER’

Colorado catering company provides diners with cannabis protocol, menu suggestions

Colorado-based Cultivating Spirits offers three-course dinners pairing food, wine and cannabis,

To your left, a fork and a wineglass. To your right, a pipe for your pot.

The pipe, with lighter and ashtray, are yours to keep at the end of a meal catered by Cultivating Spirits, which pairs dishes with wines and — it promises — just the right kind of cannabis.

“We are adding a third layer onto your dinner experience,” said its 31year-old founder, Philip Wolf, who started the Silverthrone, Colo., company in early 2014. Wolf has two fulltime employees and, after bootstrapping for two years, recently received a verbal commitment for a $400,000 investment.

He’s one of the nation’s first accredited cannabis sommeliers, having completed two levels of schooling at the Trichome Institute in Denver. It’s one of a handful of such schools, greatly outnumbered by the many certification programs for wine sommeliers.

The legal-marijuana industry is in its infancy, with recreational use permitted in Colorado, Alaska, Oregon and Washington D.C., and it’s on the ballot in eight states this year.

Trichome calls its program Interpening, which refers to “a method used to identify and understand cannabis variety, based on interpreting the plant’s terpenes and flower structure. Scientifically speaking, terpenes are evaporating molecular hydrocarbon chains that produce scent.” Wolf “will break down the strain of cannabis and give that over to the chef,” he said.

“We don’t prepare the menu until two days before the event, to utilize the freshest ingredients.”

A typical menu features a rib-eye steak with chili relleno, a 2013 Malbec and Gorilla Glue. For dessert, there’s a white chocolate creme brûlée with a 2012 Petite Syrah and Blue Dream.

The protocol is puff, eat, drink, in that order, though it’s more a sensible suggestion than a rule. Wolf doesn’t expect weed to replace wine at the dinner table.

“If anything, I think it’ll take something away from hard alcohol,” as the slow, deliberate tasting experience of wine and marijuana makes for a better pair than food and cocktails

Most restaurants charge handsomely for a dinner with wine pairings. Adding weed to the mix only increases the price. The minimum cost of a three-course pairing dinner catered by Wolf is $1,250, which provides enough of everything to entertain a group of 10. The company, which caters at least five events a month, served 56 people for dinner on opening night of X Games in 2015.

Cultivating Spirits targets bachelor, bachelorette and birthday parties, as well as the wedding industry.

Many of Wolf’s customers are millennials treating themselves for a special event, he said, as well as affluent women hosting an alternative dinner party.

“What I’m trying to teach millennials is to slow down a little bit, to get in tune with themselves and what they’re putting in their bodies, to focus on different tastes and textures,” Wolf said. He added that he doesn’t target that demographic exclusively.

“I feel like cannabis is something for all walks of life,” he said.

“What I’m trying to teach millennials is to slow down a little bit . . . to focus on different tastes and textures.” PHILIP WOLF POT SOMMELIER