Marijuana Strain Review: Mint Chocolate Chip at Canna-bis

Highland, the Highlands, the Northside — whatever the hell you want to call it — has become the poster child for Denver gentrification. But that hasn’t stopped a lot of us from going to one of the neighborhood’s trendy restaurants or trying to squeeze into Williams & Graham for a timed whiskey sour. Highland’s reputation for reefer, though, leaves much to be desired. There are significantly fewer dispensaries in Highland than in Cap Hill or RiNo, and the few that call the area home haven’t created the same buzz as the rest of the neighborhood — but you can still find some good herb up there.

A little west of Highland Park is Canna-bis, a newish dispensary at 4735 West 38th Avenue. The house-turned-dispensary used to be the stoner shack/pot shop known as At Home Remedies, but Canna-bis bought the place last year and took out most of the random ’60s trinkets that had given the shop its quirky charm. Unfortunately, the grunge remains, which I observed while sitting in the same dusty office chairs used by the previous tenant.

Luckily for me, the flower at Canna-bis was anything but dirty. The discounted Bubba Gum was top-shelf and worthy of any dispensary, and a whiff of both the Green Crack and the Golden Goat woke me up like sativa smelling salts. But I was looking for something a little more balanced — spacing both my mind and body. One particular fifty-fifty hybrid, Mint Chocolate Chip, smelled like it was more than capable of sending me to the moon, so I bought a gram for $10 after tax.

Mint Chocolate Chip is a rare strain from Exotic Genetics that Canna-bis now grows. Bred from a Girl Scout Cookies phenotype and Green Ribbon BX, it has a growing reputation in the California Bay area as a palate-wrecker with pulsating effects. Its creamy, lavender sweetness quickly lulled my nose to sleep, but then it slapped me with a pine/mint after-scent that was very similar to spearmint. Each dense, pebble-like bud was coated in a frosty sheath of trichomes, adding to the strain’s Cold Stone Creamery appeal.

After that, chocolate and other zesty flavors crept up to my taste buds, with the earthiness of the Girl Scout genetics providing an OG-flavored cherry on top. Like a barrel-aged beer, this strain required a minute or two to analyze all of the complex flavor profiles coming at me. Mint, chocolate, citrus, soil and lavender were all fighting for space on my tongue...while I floated into the stratosphere. Mint Chocolate Chip’s mind-and-body melt was a fantastic sensation that left me alert enough to comprehend what was going on in House of Cards while also curing my jittery coffee stomach.

Little Man Ice Cream might want to give Canna-bis a call.

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