#109 – The Emerald Cup Cannabis Contest with Taylor Blake and Victoria Adelus

Introduction

Vadim  00:01

Do you want two free passes to one of the greatest events in cannabis history? Oh, you do? Well,l then listen up. All right. And we are back in class. This is Vadim, the CBD professor from cbdschool.com: Your school to learn all about cannabidiol. Hey, everyone, this is Vadim, the CBD professor here and this episode of the CBD School Podcast was one of the coolest ones I ever did. I got to sit down with Taylor and Victoria from The Emerald Cup, which is –if you don’t know already– one of the greatest cannabis events, competitions, conferences in the world. It’s one of the oldest. It’s a grassroots, sungrown, which means outdoor cannabis cup competition. It’s just a super awesome environment with very humbled people and just great vibes in Northern California. 

Taylor is actually the daughter of the man who started The Emerald Cup. I believe this is the 16th year. Don’t hold me to that. But I know it’s double digit years in age that this cup has been going on. And I’ve got a surprise for you. Do you want two free tickets to The Emerald Cup happening in December? This year, The Emerald Cup is happening on December 14th and 15th in Santa Rosa, California. There’s going to be music, there’s going to be events, obviously there’s the whole contest with all of the outdoor sungrown marijuana that they’re going to be having on display there. It’s just a great experience. It’s such a grassroots festival. It’s been going on, like I said, for over a decade. And if you want two free passes, one for you and for a guest of your choice, one lucky guest, then all you have to do is answer these 10 trivia questions about The Emerald Cup. Email the answers to me at cbdprofessor@gmail.com. So if you want to go to The Emerald Cup and you want two free tickets, make sure you email me at cbdprofessor@gmail.com with the answers to the following 10 questions. 

All right, here we go. Question 1. Who is the founder of The Emerald Cup? Question 2. What county did The Emerald Cup start in? Question 3. Fill in the blank. This will be the blank Annual Emerald Cup. Question 4. What counties make up The Emerald Triangle? Question 5. What year did The Emerald Cup come to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds? Question 6. Who won The Willie Nelson award last year at the 2018 Emerald Cup? Question 7. What was the winner for the 2018 Tim’s Choice category for flowers? Question 8. Is the Emerald Cup contest an indoor or outdoor cannabis competition? Question 9. Name one new category that’s going on this year at the cup. And last but not least, question 10. And this is an important one. When is the deadline to enter The Emerald cup contest? Hint: They did just extend it. So if you want to enter, you still can.

So that’s the 10 questions. Email me the answers at cbdprofessor@gmail.com and I will hook you up with two free tickets to The Emerald Cup 2019. That’s it for the intro. And I really hope that you enjoy this podcast with Taylor and Victoria from The Emerald Cup. 

Today is an extra special episode of the CBD School Podcast. I’m here with Taylor and Victoria of The Emerald Cup, quite possibly the most famous cannabis cup in the world, at least one of the most historic ones. And Taylor is the daughter of the founder of the Cup; Victoria is their secret weapon. And I’ll let her introduce herself in about a second. But let’s actually start there Taylor and Victoria, please take turns introducing yourselves and telling us a little bit about yourself. So Taylor, you can go first.

Taylor  05:22

Thank you so much for having us. We’re really excited to be talking with you today. Like you just said, I am Tim Blake’s daughter, the founder of Emerald Cup. I’ve been working on Emerald Cup for years, and I’ve done a lot of things along the way with the Cup. But the thing that I focus on primarily now is the competition side of things. But we’re all based out of Northern California. My dad and I live in Mendocino County, and then The Emerald Cup takes place in Santa Rosa, California.

Vadim  05:49

Oh, cool. Okay.

Victoria  05:50

Yeah. Thank you for having us, Vadim. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m Victoria. This is my fourth year with the cup. I helped Taylor oversee the contest, and do some various odds and ends around the cup as well, whatever needs to be done.

What is The Emerald Cup?

Vadim  06:03

Awesome. So for anyone that’s listening, that doesn’t know what The Emerald cup is. And you know, normally on this podcast, we’re covering CBD related stuff, not so much of the marijuana, cannabis, THC stuff. But what is The Emerald Cup for people that don’t know anything about it.

Taylor  06:23

So The Emerald Cup was started, this will be its 16th year, at my dad’s property in Louisville, California. We actually just started as a friendly competition amongst sungrown growers. Because as we know, most every grower thinks that they grow the best cannabis or CBD. So it just kind of came around as a friendly farmers party where they sort of just wanted to see who had the best in their friend group. And then every single year sort of expanded and gained more traction. Like I said, since it started out as like a very small party, there wasn’t the big dream for it to be where it is now. It’s really beautiful, and just the organic traction, that’s how we’ve grown. And it went from a very, very small event in a private place to now it’s a 20,000 person event that takes place in Santa Rosa, California at the Fairgrounds. And the best thing about our competition is that it really focuses on sungrown cannabis. And we only started out as just a sungrown cannabis competition, but now we trudged into having 28 separate categories. We have a whole category that goes across a bunch of different types of products, from flower to topical, concentrates, tincture. This year we also have a hemp-derived CBD topical category. That’s the first time we’ve ever done that. So we try to kind of keep our finger on the pulse of where the cannabis industry is going.

Vadim  07:42

Wow, cool. So this is the first year you have a hemp-derived? 

Taylor  07:46

Yeah. 

Vadim  07:47

Wow, that’s awesome. Before you had that, were there other entrants that were focused on high CBD strains like ACDC or Harlequin?

Taylor  07:58

Yeah, we have a good amount of people entering into our CBD category. I don’t know if any of you have any idea of a guesstimate of entries over the years. But we definitely get a large amount of contestants that enter their products, whether that’s a flower. But usually I feel like the more exciting stuff is to kind of see the progression of other methods of consuming CBD in particular. But we have a ton of really great strains that are, like you said, ACDC or Harlequin. So we have been getting more interesting last year this year about people wanting to enter with hemp. So we thought it was a good idea to create its own category.

Vadim  08:32

Oh, yeah. I think it was a great idea. And for people that want to enter, is there still time?

Taylor  08:39

Yes, there is. We’ve extended our entry deadline until next week, Wednesday, which is November the 27th.

Vadim  08:45

Okay. And how can people enter if they want to enter?

Taylor  08:48

We have an online entry form through the Cup website under the Contest page. And once that’s completed, all legal licensed entities can utilize their distro or distributor to drop off in Cloverdale, Northern California at the Seed 2 Soul retail location.

Vadim  09:06

Okay, cool, cool. So yeah, we’ll leave all this information in the show notes for everybody. After the show, you can check all that out. And also they can get in contact with both of you, I’m assuming, if they have questions or anything like that.

Taylor & Victoria 09:21

Absolutely. 

Vadim  09:21

Okay. Great, great. So what do you see among the winners typically? What are some of the characteristics?

Taylor  09:28

One of the more interesting things because this will be our 10th year working with SC Labs, which is a testing laboratory based out of Santa Cruz, we started working with them just to kind of test the potency and make sure that the micro and peptide levels are safe to consume. And one of the more interesting things once we started doing terpene testing with them for the entries that we realized that there was a pattern between the highest THC flower was never the winner. It always was that entourage effect between the cannabinoids and the terpenes gave us an interesting one that won. So we thought that that was kind of an interesting distinguishment among the stereotypes. People always think that it’s the highest THC that probably wins or it’s the one that gets you the most stoned. But that’s actually never been the case for our traditional sungrown category. It’s definitely always been a combination of the entourage effect. 

Vadim  10:20

Cool. That is very much in line with what I would have expected. You know, people are looking for that entourage effect, because it’s not just the medicinal component or the therapeutic component, but the flavor. My personal favorite is the diesel or the Chemdog type strains. And I just love that flavor. It’s almost like a class of its own.

Taylor  10:43

Absolutely.

Vadim  10:44

Yeah, that’s great. So have you had a lot of hemp entrants already this year?

Taylor  10:49

Vicki, how many hemp topical entries do we have? I think we definitely have a handful. I know that. But it’s interesting, we kind of get into this sort of strange thing every single year where we try to have a very long window for entry. And then of course, the entries always come in the last week. Even though we’re trying to kind of get people into entering earlier, they just always entered the last week. But we do have a handful of people entering, and what’s so interesting about it is that since hemp had to go through the traditional testing regulations and stuff. So we’re definitely excited to see what entries are submitted this year.

Competing in the Contest

Vadim  11:24

Okay, yes. Can you tell the listeners a little bit more about it or maybe how it works? Because it’s in California, so it’s subject to the California laws, I’m assuming?

Taylor  11:35

Yeah, absolutely. So the one thing that’s very interesting about the contest is that I think a lot of different people in the industry say this a lot. But we definitely missed the good old days sometimes. We sort of ran the contest as we thought was the most organized as we saw fit. But now with regulations in place in California, it’s definitely a more stringent process to enter into the contest. So it has to go from basically a licensed producer. So you’d have to have your license to either manufacture a product or grow a product, extract into a concentrate, you have to have your license. And then you’d have to have your product distributed by your distributor. It has to go through a compliance test, which is very stringent in California. It has to pass that testing, and then it would be able to come to us through a distributor to our facility that we’re using and partnering with in Cloverdale. And then we would then take the product to submit it to our judges. 

There’s like a lot of steps along the way in which a licensed California cannabis company would have to submit their entries. And what’s so different about that is that if you’re a hemp company, though, you don’t have to go through a distributor, you don’t have to go through the same testing procedures. Just because obviously hemp and cannabis are separate. So it’s just a totally different way with them.

Vadim  12:52

Okay, cool. Cool. So, actually, the hemp entrance have a bit of an advantage there. 

Taylor  12:58

Absolutely. Yeah. 

Vadim  13:00

Okay. But the cannabis entrance, it has to be California licensed companies, did I hear that correct? 

Taylor  13:05

Yeah. 

Vadim  13:05

Okay. Yeah. Until I guess we get the federal things moving along, which I’m hoping 2020 might be that year. But I don’t know. What do you two think of that?

Victoria  13:15

That’s a tough one. Hopefully, it’s 2020. But I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it’ll change anytime soon. And yeah, we’re just fingers crossed for 2020, I’d say. 

Vadim  13:24

Yeah.

Taylor  13:24

I think the Banking bill that was instituted as well on a federal level, I think is a good sign hopefully in the right direction. And I think it’s really interesting to think about and 2020 is obviously a presidential year for running. So I think we might see a lot of interesting talking points around the issue of federal legalization with cannabis.

Vadim  13:44

Yeah, exactly. And I don’t know, I might have missed it. But to enter the contest, it has to be all sungrown outdoors?

Victoria  13:52

We have sungrown outdoor and mixed light flowers in addition to CBD flowers.

Vadim  13:57

Okay. And what is that mixed light? How does that work?

Taylor  14:00

Mixed light is the use of any kind of supplemental lighting in your cultivation process. So traditional sungrown is no supplemental lighting. So you just have your plants outside the sun. And then mix lighting would be in a greenhouse or what they call simply light deprivation, where you’re using supplemental lighting to kind of trick the plants into thinking that it’s a different time of the year. So you can actually get more harvests in one year than the traditional sungrown farm. 

Why Go Sungrown?

Vadim  14:28

Yeah. And what made you want to focus on sungrown? Is that because that’s the natural way cannabis grew historically, like in agriculture?

Taylor  14:37

Yeah. My dad’s ethos definitely surrounds, you know, his entire lifestyle of how he sort of lives with The Emerald Cup. So he’s very regenerative farming conscious, organic food conscious. So he definitely thinks, you know, that’s kind of what the whole conversation has started with sungrown, is that people used to think it was a subpar flower. There was always that kind of hype around indoor versus sungrown and so that’s one of the reasons why he thought that this is a great way to kind of increase the awareness around the awesomeness and diversity of sungrowns. It’s also the more responsible way to cultivate, which is the extreme power needs used for indoor cultivation.

Victoria  15:14

That’s a controlled environment. For the sungrown, you know, you’re subject to the weather and all of the environment that you’re going in. Whereas indoors, it’s more of a highly controlled situation. So sungrown, it’s more challenging and rewarding to come up with a really beautiful plant at the end of the season. 

Vadim  15:34

Oh, yeah. I mean, this year, my dad and I, we grew an acre of high CBD hemp, and I don’t even think we would have had a facility with tall enough ceilings to get the height that we got. I mean, these plants were 15 feet high. 

Victoria  15:54

Wow. 

Vadim  15:34

Yeah. 

Victoria  15:55

Congratulations. 

Vadim  15:55

Yeah, yeah. So it’s all processed now. But yeah, it was a fun experience. It was my first time growing actually like that. So really fun. And I think cannabis, it just loves to grow outside more. I visited indoor facilities and the plants just don’t look as happy.

Taylor  16:11

Yeah, that’s like it’s so funny. We always use the example of a tomato as well, in some kind of way, you know, but like that tomato that you get at your farmers market is always going to be so much more delicious than the tomato that you get at, you know, possibly SavMor, just because the love has gone into it more.

Victoria  16:26

And it soaked up all that great sunshine and had all the natural chemical reactions from that.