Roadrunner Cannabis
Item #9, Sueno
Rocky Mountain Blaze
Big Bubba Diesel, Electric Lemonade , Horchata , Papaya Cake, Sex Grenade , Tres Leches , El Chivo #4, Peking Duck #6
Rocky Mountain Cannasol
Eagle Scout , Horchata , Pruno, Rotten Cherries , Scooby Snax , Toxic Boo
Rocky Road
Apple Fritter , Apples & Bananas, Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Punch , Electric Lemonade , Horchata , Interdimensional Cable, Papaya Cake, Sueno, The Sauce, The Sauce , Tres Leches , El Chivo #4, INFVSED Pineapple Blast, INFVSED Scooby Snax, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2, Tart Pops #3
Rocky Road Remedies
Apples & Bananas, Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Diesel, Funyunz, Garlic Breath, Interdimensional Cable, Marmot OG, Pancakes, Papaya Cake, Snickerz, Sour Diesel, Street Urchin, Sueno, Sunset Drive, GG #4, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2
Roots Rx
Cherry Hills , Cherry Punch , Citrus Cake , Divine Kush Breath , Eagle Scout , Frankenberry , Mac N Cheese , Mandarin Cookies , Milky Weigh , OG Sin , Oreoz , Passionfruit , Quatro Kush , Rotten Cherries , Scooby Snax , Sour Apple , Sour Diesel , Toxic Boo , Tres Leches , Tropsanto , Veritas Cookies , Durban Kush #8, GG #4, Item #9, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2
Sandia Botanicals
Cherry Hills, Item #9, Sueno
Simply Pure
Apples & Bananas , Rotten Cherries , Toxic Boo , El Chivo #4, INFVSED Sherb Crasher, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1
Solace Meds
Apples & Bananas , Electric Lemonade , Sex Grenade , Toxic Boo , El Chivo #4, INFVSED Sour Orange Zkittlez, Melonade #8
Spark Dispensary
Apples & Bananas, Grape Cream Cake, Pancakes, Sunset Drive
TGS
Apple Fritter , Cherry Punch , Frankenberry , Frozen Dessert , Horchata , El Chivo #4
The 404 Dispensary
Citrus Cake , Divine Kush Breath , Milky Weigh , Rotten Cherries , Tropsanto , Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2
The 64 Store
Cherry Diesel, OG Sin
The Dispo
Apples & Bananas, Cherry Diesel, Double Deja Vu , Frankenberry , Pancakes , Papaya Cake, Passionfruit , Scooby Snax, Sour Diesel, Tangidos , The Sauce, Toxic Boo , El Chivo #4, GG #4, Item #9, Melonade #8, Peking Duck #6
The Happy Camper
Apples & Bananas , Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Hills , Frankenberry , Frozen Dessert , Interdimensional Cable, Mac N Cheese , Mandarin Cookies , Milky Weigh , OG Sin, OG Sin , Pancakes , Passionfruit , Pruno, Quatro Kush , Rotten Cherries , Sour Apple , Street Urchin, Tangidos , Toxic Boo , Veritas Cookies , El Chivo #4, GG #4, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1, Root Canal #2
The Joint By Cannabis
Cherry Punch , Frozen Dessert , OG Sin, Pruno, Street Urchin, Melonade #8
Third Day Apothecary
Cherry Diesel, Garlic Breath, Marmot OG, Sour Diesel, GG #4, Peking Duck #6
Top Crop
Cherry Hills, Item #9, Sueno
Tumbleweed
Apples & Bananas, Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Hills , Double Deja Vu , Electric Lemonade , Frankenberry , Georgia Pie , Horchata , Interdimensional Cable, Mac N Cheese , Scooby Snax, Sex Grenade , Sour Diesel, Sueno, The Sauce , Tres Leches , Apples & Bananas, Durban Kush #8, El Chivo #4, Item #9, Muffinz Breath #1, Root Canal #2, Sunset Drive
Twin Peaks
Frozen Dessert , OG Sin, Sex Grenade , Street Urchin, El Chivo #4, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1
Unity Rd.
Apples & Bananas , Toxic Boo , El Chivo #4, Item #9
Zipz
Cherry Diesel, Garlic Breath, Sherb Crasher, Peking Duck #6
ANNA
OG Sin, Pruno, Street Urchin, Root Canal #2
Best High
Apples & Bananas, Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Hills , Cherry Punch , Electric Lemonade , Frankenberry , Mac N Cheese , Mandarin Cookies , OG Sin, OG Sin , Oreoz , Pruno, Pruno , Quatro Kush , Sex Grenade , Melonade #8, Root Canal #2
Blue Heron
Interdimensional Cable, OG Sin, Pancakes, Pruno, Street Urchin, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2
COS Confidential
Apple Fritter , Apples & Bananas , Double Deja Vu , Electric Lemonade , Horchata , Oreoz , Scooby Snax , Strawberry Guava , Triangle OG , El Chivo #4, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1, Sugar Rush #2
Canna Cabinet
Apples & Bananas , Pancakes , Toxic Boo , Veritas Cookies , El Chivo #4, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1
CannaCo
Apples & Bananas, Cherry Diesel, Garlic Breath, Pancakes, Scooby Snax, Sour Diesel, The Sauce, GG #4
Cannabicare
Apple Fritter , Apples & Bananas , Cherry Diesel, Cherry Hills , Garlic Breath, OG Sin, Sherb Crasher, Sour Diesel, Durban Kush #8, El Chivo #4, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1, Sugar Rush #2
Cherry Peak
Apples & Bananas , Electric Lemonade , Frozen Dessert , OG Sin, Pancakes , Street Urchin, Toxic Boo , Tres Leches , El Chivo #4, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1
Colorado Harvest Company
Apple Fritter , Apples & Bananas, Apples & Bananas , Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Hills , Cherry Punch , Electric Lemonade , Frankenberry , Frozen Dessert , Georgia Pie , Horchata , Interdimensional Cable, Mac N Cheese , Marmot OG, OG Sin, OG Sin , Oreoz , Pancakes , Papaya Cake , Pruno, Pruno , Rotten Cherries , Sex Grenade , Snickerz, Sour Apple , Street Urchin, The Sauce , Toxic Boo , Tres Leches , Veritas Cookies , Apples & Bananas, El Chivo #4, INFVSED Scooby Snax, INFVSED The Sauce, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2, Sugar Rush #2, Sunset Drive, Tart Pops #3
Dark Matter
Cherry Hills, Item #9, Sueno
EMJ's
Apples & Bananas, Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Diesel, Scooby Snax, Snickerz, Street Urchin, Sunset Drive, The Sauce, GG #4, Peking Duck #6
Elevated
Electric Lemonade , Sex Grenade , The Sauce , Toxic Boo , El Chivo #4, INFVSED Sueno
Emerald City Wellness
Cherry Diesel, INFVSED Oreoz, INFVSED Sour Orange Zkittlez, Peking Duck #6
Green Dragon
Apple Fritter , Electric Lemonade , Horchata , Oreoz , Pancakes , Pruno , Toxic Boo , Veritas Cookies , El Chivo #4, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1
Green World Express
Apples & Bananas, Frankenberry , Mac N Cheese , Snickerz, Sour Diesel, Tres Leches , El Chivo #4
HERBS 4 YOU
Electric Lemonade , Sex Grenade , Root Canal #2
High Class
Cherry Hills, Item #9, Sueno
Igadi
Cherry Diesel, Electric Lemonade , Frozen Dessert , Garlic Breath, OG Sin , Pancakes, Rotten Cherries , Snickerz, Sour Diesel, Sunset Drive, El Chivo #4, GG #4
Kind Care of Colorado
Toxic Boo , El Chivo #4, INFVSED Apple Fritter, INFVSED Peking Duck #6, INFVSED Scooby Snax, INFVSED Sherb Crasher, INFVSED Sueno, INFVSED Sunset Drive, INFVSED The Sauce, INFVSED Yuk Mouth, Melonade #8
LA CASA CANNA BIS
Apples & Bananas, Frankenberry , Mac N Cheese , Snickerz, Sour Diesel, Tres Leches , El Chivo #4
LIGHTSHADE
Apples & Bananas , Frankenberry , The Sauce , El Chivo #4, INFVSED Sueno, Item #9
Lightshade
Apple Fritter , Apples & Bananas, Apples & Bananas , Electric Lemonade , Frankenberry , Pruno , The Sauce , El Chivo #4, Item #9
Livgreen
Apples & Bananas, Apples & Bananas , Big Bubba Diesel, Cherry Diesel, Cherry Hills , Double Deja Vu , Frankenberry , Funyunz, Georgia Pie , Oreoz , Pancakes, Pancakes , Scooby Snax , Snickerz, Sour Diesel, Sunset Drive, The Sauce, Veritas Cookies , El Chivo #4, GG #4, Item #9, Melonade #8
Lucky Monkey Buds
Apples & Bananas, Garlic Breath, Pancakes, Scooby Snax, Sour Diesel
Magnolia Road
Chemdawg , Divine Kush Breath , Milky Weigh , OG Sin , Tropsanto , Watermelon Sorbet , Durban Kush #8, Root Canal #2
Magnolia Road
Apples & Bananas , Chemdawg , Cherry Hills , Cherry Punch , Divine Kush Breath , OG Sin, OG Sin , Papaya Cake, Pruno, Scooby Snax , Street Urchin, The Sauce, Tropsanto , Watermelon Sorbet , Durban Kush #8, El Chivo #4, Item #9, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2
Makena
Apples & Bananas , Rotten Cherries , El Chivo #4, Item #9
Mellow Harvest
Cherry Hills, Item #9, Sueno
Munchiez
Sueno
Native Roots
Apple Fritter , Apples & Bananas , Cherry Hills , Cherry Punch , Double Deja Vu , Electric Lemonade , Frankenberry , Frozen Dessert , Horchata , Interdimensional Cable, Mac N Cheese , OG Sin, OG Sin , Oreoz , Pancakes , Pruno, Pruno , Rotten Cherries , Sex Grenade , Street Urchin, The Sauce , Tres Leches , Veritas Cookies , Durban Kush #8, El Chivo #4, INFVSED The Sauce, Item #9, Melonade #8, Muffinz Breath #1, Peking Duck #6, Root Canal #2
Oasis Cannabis Superstore
Cherry Hills , OG Sin, Veritas Cookies , Item #9
Peak Dispensary
Electric Lemonade , OG Sin, Pruno , Sex Grenade
Peak North
Horchata , Tres Leches , INFVSED Apple Fritter, INFVSED Scooby Snax, INFVSED The Sauce, INFVSED Yuk Mouth, Item #9

November 1, 2021

As Legal Marijuana Evolves, Does Sour Diesel Still Carry the Same Weight?

THOMAS MITCHELL NOVEMBER 1, 2021 6:35AM

Sour Diesel's place in the strain hall of fame is secure, but how relevant is it today?

Sour Diesel's place in the strain hall of fame is secure, but how relevant is it today? Flickr/Furvert 101I’ll never forget the first time my parents accused me of smoking weed. I thought I’d done everything right: My teeth were brushed, my eyes were clear and my shirt was fresh. The giveaway wasn’t how I looked, though, my old man later told me. It was the gas fumes coming out of my bedroom.

Trying to contain Sour Diesel’s skunky, sour aroma of gas and tennis balls with a few Ziploc bags is like taking on a charging rhino with a slingshot. Every doe-eyed pot smoker discovers this eventually, and it was Sour Diesel that enlightened us.

If you compare strains to beer, Sour Diesel is a Pilsner. Smooth, refined and consistent, and top of the list for our desert island stash. But Sour Diesel is also finicky in the grow, notoriously susceptible to powdery mildew, and it doesn’t yield a lot of weight compared to some of today’s resin-covered heavyweights, which can smell damn good in their own right.

Built on a loose, old-school bud structure and lacking the frosty trichomes of its modern counterparts, Sour Diesel has become harder to find in Denver over the years as users trend toward newer, sexier strains.


Sour Diesel's open bud structure and vibrant colors are easy to recognize. - THOMAS MITCHELL

Nearly every dispensary had an in-house cut when recreational stores first opened in 2014, serving as a standard for judging grower against grower. Since then, though, the go-to defining strain has gone from Sour Diesel to Blue Dream to Gorilla Glue to Girl Scout Cookies to GMO to who gives a hoot, because none of the new kids will bring a smile to a longtime grower’s face like Sour D.

“I still think it’s one of the best strains we have,” says Veritas Fine Cannabis co-founder and longtime cannabis grower Mike Leibowitz. A New England native, Leibowitz remembers his reaction to Sour Diesel’s energetic, clear-minded high in the ’90s.

“We were smoking a lot of Skunks at that point, and I was getting tired of them. But then Sour Diesel comes along,” he recalls. “It was so potent, but in a different kind of way — more uplifting. It wasn’t making you go straight to bed, and that was new back then.”

Sour Diesel’s backstory and genetics are a little hazy, but it’s generally accepted as having a Chemdog influence, and rose to fame on the East Coast over two decades ago before eventually ending up in the hands of California growers. The strain has trademark fluffy lime-green buds and fan leaves that look like bits of dark-green paper, and an even more recognizable smell and taste. The effects, right out of a euphoric cup of coffee, make for a quintessential daytime high. When medical marijuana dispensaries began opening in Colorado in 2008, Sour Diesel was one of the first plants that a grower would choose.
Sour Diesel's open bud structure and vibrant colors are easy to recognize. Thomas MitchellAlthough he says he’s been able to garner a good yield from the strain, Leibowitz says that Sour Diesel takes longer to bloom than most strains and “has a lot of challenges” compared to other cannabis varieties. Despite being one of his favorites at the company, Sour Diesel doesn’t gain as many new fans as it used to, either, he notes. And for all the passion and love they put into the plants, growers still have to run a business.

“There are so many flavors of the week and month that are legitimately awesome. I’ve grown Sour Diesel for a long time, so I get why people would look at Orange Zkittlez or some form of Cookies, but for me it’s one of the top strains in the world,” he says. “No one is bragging about breeding with Sour Diesel, though, because that’s what they did eight years ago. If you’re coming out of the gate as your own flower company right now, you’re probably not leading the news with Sour Diesel at this point.”

New growers trying to make a reputation for themselves have to weigh more than popularity when picking out strains or breeding lines, too. Malek Noueiry, founder of wholesale cultivation Malek’s Premium Cannabis, says he works to balance commercial factors such as yield, potency, pathogen resistance and flowering time when picking out strains to grow, and cannabis breeders have been matching strains to maximize those characteristics. Taking Sour Diesel’s gassy qualities into consideration and matching it with a sturdier strain has been done before and will be done again, but that can dilute the original appeal, Noueiry says.

“That’s why a lot of stuff has been hybridized over the years — to make it grow better in certain conditions. You’ll find easier-growing plants that yield a little better and are more resilient to pathogens and problems than Sour Diesel,” he explains. “A lot of commercial grows need to hit numbers to pay the bills, but that can drown out some of those original qualities you look for.”

A Sour Diesel lover since 2002, Noueiry first bought an eighth of the strain for $75 while living in Texas. He’s been a fan ever since, but waited a few harvests before introducing Sour Diesel into his commercial lineup as his company worked to reach new cannabis customers, many of whom weren’t buying weed twenty years ago (but are still willing to pay the same prices for colorful packaging). According to Noueiry, most new users don’t immediately learn about Sour Diesel like they might have six or seven years ago.

“We’re in this battle of everyone trying to update their menus, keep things fresh and appease the masses. The less educated customer who follows what’s being marketed on Instagram might think Sour Diesel is old or played out, but it’s not,” he says.
Inside the grow at L'Eagle, where old-school strains have a loyal following. Thomas MitchellWith the challenges and time involved with growing Sour Diesel, growers who don’t have a personal connection to the strain might not feel the need to keep it around. Noueiry admits that if it weren’t for his interest and nostalgic connection to Sour Diesel, he’d probably be growing “whatever is hot” right now, while pointing out that other popular strains from decades past, like Grand Daddy Purple, Headband or Orange Kush haven’t held on the way Sour Diesel has.

Some dispensaries have built followings based on their ability to grow older strains, however. L’Eagle, a Denver pot shop founded by John and Amy Andrle in 2010, still sells strains like Hindu Kush, Grape Ape and Strawberry Cough. Never sold on discount and occasionally limited to an eighth per customer, Sour Diesel is the store’s most popular strain, according to John.

“We never take it off the exclusive shelf. We never run it on special. People get it, and they’re willing to pay that premium,” says L’Eagle sales manager Stephen Doran. “For the people who are tried and true, they’re still going to be attracted to that. It’s an awesome strain to smoke. To grow, it’s not so awesome, and that scares some dispensaries away.”

Other growers are trying to keep Sour Diesel’s legacy and genetics intact while taking a new approach. Lama Brand Cannabis founder Tony Karas cuts his Sour Diesel down in two months instead of ten weeks, and says he hasn’t noticed any compromise on yield or flavor. The yield and overall THC content still falls short of more trendy strains like MAC and Papaya, though.

THC potency isn’t always the most important ingredient in good weed, Karas argues. Caryophyllene, myrcene and limonene, the plant terpenes responsible for Sour Diesel’s strong smell and flavor, are just as important in the recipe. Even as cannabis names and flavors shift away from the gas station and toward the bakery, he believes that regular users, new and old, always gravitate to the fumes eventually.

“The OGs who’ve been around forever, they’ll always respect Sour Diesel, and that’s what they want to keep smoking,” Karas says. “That gassy profile is what I love most. Exotics are hot shit right now, but Sour Diesel is a classic.”

Trends come and go, but classics are eternal.

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