Best of CA’s Fall Harvest on Display at Emerald Cup

Growers throughout California have submitted 120 pounds of organic, outdoor flowers from this year’s harvest for the Emerald Cup. While the judges do their very best to smoke the last of their samples this week, next weekend event goers will have a chance to taste test some of the dankest strains the Golden State has to offer.

The Emerald Cup is essentially a cannabis county fair, on chronic, and will be appropriately held at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds. Last year, the event arose from an exclusive underground gathering held for more than a decade for growers in the Emerald Triangle into a full blown public celebration, marking a turning point for the California breeders and growers that have put the state on the forefront of cannabis production since the 1960s.

In the cannabis movement, the Emerald Cup promotes a true farm-to-table experience — only at the cup it’s grower-to-toker.  Attendees in the event’s Proposition 215 area can mingle with seed companies and breeders, sampling herb and dabbing as they go. At the cup, attendees can meet the breeders who have spent their lives preserving and cultivating heirloom and landrace strains and spot weed-centric celebrities such as the Strain Hunters.

The 2014 flower competition includes 651 entries that set a high standard for sustainable sungrown cannabis. The entries are being judged over a six-week period, with judges meeting each week to receive new buds samples and evaluate the offerings of the prior week. Once the entries, sampled in 1.5 gram amounts each, are narrowed down to 40, they are evaluated double-blind to determine a top 20. The top 10 strains will be chosen and, much like a county fair, event goers will have a chance to ogle all the premium herb in a glass display case in the Hall of Flowers.

The competition also includes 76 solvent-less concentrate entries as well as an edible and topical competition. The two-day gathering will also include a speaker line up that features some of the most well-respected activists, breeders, cultivators, educators and musical acts  to keep the party going into the evening.

Purchase tickets for the event here.

Will you be attending the Emerald Cup? Tell us in the comments below.