In the back yard of the Wu Wei Tea Temple, a café in Fairfax, California, Brant Hindman, operations director of a new cannabis social club, HerbaBuena, held court with patrons in their 40s and 50s on a Saturday afternoon. He stood behind a table filled with biodynamic, sun-grown cannabis flowers on display under glass bell jars, each with a description written like wine-tasting notes on fancy cards: ‘amazing balance of THC to CDB,’ ‘pain easing and ‘bright high’.

Hindman, tall with a shaved head, laughed and half-jokingly called himself a ‘sensimelier’ as he advised the club’s members toward the flower ‘with fruit in the terpenes’ or the one with ‘a more earthly, marigold nose’.”