Marijuana Strain Review: Purple Cotton at GroundSwell

It’s great to be a pot nerd in Denver these days. Two years ago, I could merely window-shop the waiting room of MMJ stores, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story admiring a Red Ryder BB gun. Today I can buy marijuana all over town. Still, I’ll never take the opportunity to legally shop for pot for granted, so when I saw that GroundSwell, at 3121 East Colfax Avenue, was doing some outside renovations, I stopped in to see what was going on inside.

If any changes had been made there, they were already completed. So instead of checking out a work-in-progress, I took a peek at the products. Plump buds of GroundSwell’s strains sat in tiny appetizer dishes, and had there not been glass between me and them, I might’ve gobbled them up. My budtender, who probably geeks out on pot more than I do, went into detail about every strain before I had to ask. She recommended the Purple Cotton for potency at the end of the day. I wanted something to knock me out for an early flight to Chicago the next morning, so I bought a half-eighth of it for $20 after tax.

I’m a die-hard fan of the Phoenix Suns, and the deep shades of purple and burning orange hairs on Purple Cotton’s dense buds inspired flashbacks of dropping blunts while celebrating another Steve Nash dime to Amar’e Stoudemire. The buds were a little on the dry side, but they were trimmed well, with a few frosty leaves left on the sides, and they had achieved some decent trichome development. My bottle smelled like a draft pour of a dark Belgian beer: intoxicatingly ripe and fruity, with scents of clove and cinnamon closing it out.

Purple Cotton is a heavy indica-dominant hybrid bred with Purple Kush and Cotton Candy genetics, so I expected a quick blow. A few Volcano bags at 300 degrees provided some faint grape flavors but didn’t taste like much else. I wasn’t really concerned, though, because the high was incredible. Waves of relaxation rippled through my body within a few minutes, and I suddenly became passionate about every unoriginal segment on the news. Fortunately, GroundSwell’s Purple Cotton delivered on its nighttime promise and put me out quickly. My only regret is not packing for my trip beforehand: Who needs five pairs of jeans on a twelve-day trip in the summer?

Strain Gang is our weekly critique of a cannabis strain at a recreational store. For MMJ reviews, go to westword.com/news. Have a suggestion for a strain review? Send it to [email protected].