If you smoke as good as Californians, rest assured—you smoke as good as the best in the world. That’s the takeaway from the marijuana flower scene in Barcelona this March during the massive, weeklong Spannabis festival.
Our monthly West Coast fire flower round-up, Leafly Buzz, jetted over to the decriminalized Catalonian city for a week of elite hash contests, visits to the best lounges recommended, and a 10,000-person gathering from every continent.
Sure, we saw European specialties like Amnesia Haze, and even a Big Buddha Cheese. But Z strains dominated award shows; Zoap and Permanent Marker abounded. The New World has freshly seeded The Old.
This global cannabis conversation proved cacophonous with excitement—synced by smartphones and Instagram. Seeds and clones move frictionlessly across continents. Almost anyone can build on the latest, greatest work from the hills of Humboldt County, CA. So exciting. Here are 13 strains that tell the story. This is Leafly Buzz for March 2024—Barcelona edition.
Data grinder
Permanent Marker
Leafly Strain of the Year 2023 goes hard in Europe. We saw purple cuts and green cuts of Seed Junky Genetics’ Permanent Marker everywhere—including Strainhunters Club, La Selva, and Terps Army—that rival our own in Los Angeles and San Francisco (some of them might be our own packs). Either way, the “Cali Weed” part of the menu looms large. Like German cars or Italian suits—Cali weed faces few rivals. There are local specialties, but our Leafly Buzzes have been right on the money for what’s smoking in these contests and scenes. More free game: Seed Junky seeds comes to newly-legal Germany this year, J Beezy writes. Permanent Marker is holding stable in the US with page views down just 0.7% month over month.
Big Buddha Cheese
Remember the old-school skunk strain called Cheese? We found a keeper of the Cheese wearing rollerblades and holding a 3rd Place trophy from the ‘Bring Your Cheese to the Party’ in Club La Selva. He was sitting there on a Monday night, enjoying his win before heading back to England. One of the most famous cuts of Cheese is Big Buddha Cheese, named for the first keeper of the Cheese “Yung.”
Cheese is iconically musky and stinky with an intense Skunk high. It’s notorious for getting people busted. “The smell gets everywhere,” said Lord Dank, who had to quadruple bag it for travel. Next up for Lord Dank, aka Nigel, is making fresh new Big Buddha Cheese seeds, and we wish him luck. See also: Gouda from Snowtill, San Francisco. It’s one-quarter Cheese. Big Buddha Cheese strain page traffic is rare and volatile, dropping 35% month over month. Let’s bring it back.
Mimosa
Who doesn’t love a good Barcelona brunch at, like, 3 p.m. in the afternoon? Barcelona is crushing the Sacramento, CA, flavor from Symbiotic Genetics, Mimosa. Strainhunters Club had it great in flower. The best hash I smoked all trip came in the form of a flaky, white, solventless, pungent extract from La Selva. It had so much Tangie, it was like a barrel so full of oranges, the bottom had fermented and turned a little funky. My heart ached as I let go of my Mimosa hash into the trash can, and headed to the airport. Immensely popular, Mimosa strain page traffic declined only 2.5% month over month.
New in the Database
Mendo Biscuits
This dessert-type strain from Mendocino County, CA, now grows in the underground scene of France, where it’s being crossed with local varieties and coming back even better. Bred by Higher Heights Nate, Mendo Biscuits is 20% cookies with a load of Mendo heirlooms (Mendo Purps, Green Apple Gas, Russian SilverTooth, Broze). This mashup is like a sweet pastry on La Rambla. It grows super-vigorous, big, healthy, and hearty. Mendo Biscuits plus an Amsterdam 2000 Diesel Kush grown in France is now ‘Frendo Biscuits.’ Higher Heights Nate has seeds for the global scene, and you’ll find his genetics in more and more in rec stores.
Geriza
Bask Triangle Farms grows amazing Z’s, Trop Cookies, and Cherry Trop in the rugged, mountainous, separatist ‘Basque Country’ of Spain. Celeb horticulture author Ed Rosenthal describes the place as “steeper than Humboldt.” BTF follows up on its string of Spannabis wins with fresh Z work from Basque Country. So cool. The lead-off is Ztrinklez (Z x Bazkittlez) for hash-making. But there is other, cool Basque-named strains you never heard: Zhuleiman (Ortzadar x Bazkittlez), and Geriza (Trop Cherry x Bazkittlez). Trop Cherry x a Z strain—grown in living soil—will be like a rainbow in your mouth and brain. It’s crazy to think about strains from the Sierra Nevada (Tangie) and the Rocky Mountains (Trop Cookies) thriving in the equally rugged Basque Mountains.
Epsilon F1
Time for a science lesson. We’re still on Day 1 of breeding cannabis. We don’t have that many reliable strains we can work with. Getting the kids to be exactly like the parent is called ‘stabilization.’ It’s how you make “true-breeding” strains that are “fixed,” like the tomato seeds you buy at Lowe’s. An F1 hybrid strawberry just came out. The potato is next. Real big-boy stuff.
Well—Royal Queen Seeds of The Netherlands is putting on their big-boy pants and walking around with their first true-breeding line-up of true “F1s”. Eight of them. Look at Epsilon F1. It finishes the fastest of the bunch. And it’s a mix of Blue Dream, Blueberry, Amnesia Lemon Haze, and Black Domina. They make, like, 7 generations of selection and in-crossing to stabilize it. So the end result is something else entirely. It’s physically relaxing and calming. Hype boys “see this and think it’s boring,” said a sales guy. But bottom line: fixed plants equals more money for those who can put them to use.
LCG x Kryptochronic
Sacramento, CA, icons Alien Labs has come to several US state markets, and we saw their seeds make landfall in Spain. Probably the fastest seller was the Backpack Boys’ famous Lemon Cherry Gelato x Alien Labs’ Kryptochronic. The creamy, berry, gassy cherry of LCG rules the US, and several hot drops featured the famous Gelato work. Equally legendary partner brand Connected Cannabis Co brought a Sunset Sherbert x G41 to restart the next Gelato wave on The Continent. See also: Backpack Boyz’ release of LCG x Dying Breed d Seeds’ OZ Kush.
OG Triploid
You know seedless watermelons? Well get ready for seedless weed. Mostly. Humboldt Seed Co debuted at Spannabis with “OG Triploid”—a type of OG Kush that should resist seeding. This is perfect for large-scale oil-croppers in pollen-heavy regions, among other uses. “Triploid” means the plant has an extra set of DNA packets called chromosomes, which interfere with the regular reproduction cycle. They’re born barren, as it were. Mostly. It’s a trait you can selectively breed for. Just keep in mind, life finds a way.
Hot on shelves
Luna
We found ourselves one night following a superb recommendation to the private Barcelona Club La Selva, where we relished the award-winning house specialty, Luna. Luna is Tropicanna Cookies x a Spanish strain—Suguz. It’s bringing together work from Nevada County, CA, Colorado, and Spain into an even more sugary and jammy Trop Cookies. We were swept away in a tidal wave of orange, and tooth-crackingly sweet citrus soda—like the Vichy Catalan fruit sparkling juice. If you dunk your Chips Ahoy in orange juice, you have friends in Barcelona who like Luna from RKIEM Seeds.
Banana Cooler
La Selva brings the banana wave to Barcelona with 2nd place overall indica Spannabis finisher, Banana Cooler. This indica hits like a super-premium Z with a hybrid effect. You can see what the judges liked. Long after you get lit, you still don’t want to put it out and ruin it, and it’s good till the last hit. Banana terps are evanescent: hard to create and hard to hold onto. La Selva made it look easy with their banana-licious jars.
Tea Time and RS-11
You got to give it up for LA outfit Wizard Treez and their work with RS-11 and the follow-up, Tea Time. At Spannabis on Saturday, March 16, British lads in Nikes with shoulder bags elbowed past me, thronging the booth like pork futures traders during a rally. Seed packs easily cruised past 100 euros, or ~$120 dollars. Club La Selva took a 3rd in all of Spannabis with a Tea-Time that is triple-fine. This is perfect Z work—bringing tropical candy-smelling and tasting green weed to the masses that can’t get enough. We’re 43 and still eating cherry sours. Cannabis expert in San Francisco Shannon McInerney nailed the name for this demographic: ‘Big Little Kids.’
J1
We’re going to bring it back to California for Team Elite Genetics’ J1—one of the first jars we finished after they sent us their whole lineup for testing. We all need some go-to daytime sativas and it’s hard to beat the hall of flame strain J1. Jack Herer remains a top-smelling strain for its candy-sweet taste, sizzling orange pistils, and clean up daytime high. Team Elite Genetics runs this classic car like it’s right out of the factory; part of a lineup of solid sativas: Pearadise, and Orange Soda. Jack fans in Barca would do a jumping jack for this stuff. Funny—we see better Jack in its adopted state of California than its home continent, Europe. The Columbian Exchange never ended.
High Note
Piatella
Everyone needs to start making, piatella, apparently. It’s a fine, light-colored, gooey, fragrant, almost pastry of confection-quality solventless hash, and it ruled Barcelona for yet another year. The method involves whipping to aerate the oleoresin, versus letting it nucleate and ‘sugar.’ Finding piatella in Barcelona or San Francisco is like finding a rare bottle of wine in Tuscany, or whisky in Scotland, or a special Italian pastry in Rome.
We saw an insane Banana Punch piatella at Club La Selva that went for more than 80 euros per gram. Far higher than the cost of gold. Back at the apartment, it was Dulce De Leche piatella that blew our minds—so blond, delicate, and aromatic like ambergris; from another planet. Keep an eye out for more, rare, top-priced piatella releases in the licensed markets.
More pics from the trip
