In the 1970s, the landscape of wine in the US looked markedly different from today’s. Without access to boutique wine shops across the country where an educated staff supports consumers in making exploratory and even esoteric selections, the average American wine drinker was relegated to bulk jugs of straw-wrapped Chiantis and largely uneducated about the world of the vine beyond vague notions of “whites with fish and reds with meat.”
But there were two major moments that decade that brought US consumers out of the wine dark ages and laid the foundation for this country’s modern era of oenophiles: First, the famed “Judgment Of Paris” in 1976, which saw Napa Valley Cabernet and Chardonnay beat out some of the most respected and stalwart Bordeaux selections in a blind tasting, earning top honors and officially putting California producers on the global wine map. Then, in 1978, a wine critic named Robert Parker launched a newsletter called The Wine Advocate, where he began reviewing wines and scoring them on an easy-to-understand 100-point scale.
Together, these two moments piqued the interest of the international wine trade and helped American wine drinkers understand not only that quality and craftsmanship mattered—but that they could be empowered to lean on the guidance of an industry expert to find the right wine for them.
Half a century later, the American consumer is so well versed in vino that restaurants offer book-like wine lists, and even Big Box retailers such as Costco turn to the 100-point scale to help consumers make an informed purchasing decision while buying at discount. And now, cannabis, an industry that’s had its own unique journey over the past 50 years itself, is poised to tap into these same tools to help elevate consumer engagement through education, standardization of excellence and the celebration of craft.
Enter Budist, the rating and review platform that’s taken the cannabis world by storm. Launched by industry veterans Jocelyn Sheltraw and Claudio Miranda in 2024, Budist has adopted the wine world’s 100-point scale and applied it across all major categories of cannabis products in an effort to help consumers understand quality and nuance in product assessment. “As a lifelong lover of both wine and cannabis, I’ve long seen the need for this level of quality designation,” says Miranda, who serves as the company’s COO. “Applying the 100-point scale to cannabis products offers an easy-to-digest way for consumers to understand what separates a good product from an excellent one, and helps them understand the interplay of price, quality and craftsmanship.”
The Budist platform consists of a mobile app, website, social channels, newsletter and a series of in-person and virtual events, all rooted by a robust community of both professional and consumer connoisseurs whose detailed reviews drive product discovery and quality recognition. “The 100-point scale, coupled with longform reviews written by category experts, gives consumers insight into the flavor, aroma and effects of products, which, in turn, helps them make purchasing decisions at retail,” says Budist CEO Sheltraw. In support of this consumer need and inspired by the foundation laid in wine retail, the company has partnered with key retailers in California to launch an innovative retail “shelf talker” program through which the brand provides score cards and tasting notes used to drive product engagement at point of sale.
Budist further mirrors the wine industry by tapping its team of professional critics to serve as “cannabis sommeliers” in consumption lounge environments where the shelf talkers offer flavor and aroma profiles alongside Budist-led flower tastings. In a format that feels akin to stepping into a wine tasting room, the company offers this service at a variety of industry events as well as their own hosted events series. Recent partnerships include leading tastings at retailers such as The Artist Tree, where consumers and trade members alike gain insights from these guided sensory examinations.
At the root of the Budist mission to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. Sheltraw and Miranda are building community around the standardization of product evaluation, a topic which proves to be more nuanced in cannabis than wine. “In wine, you may evaluate a Cabernet by a certain set of long-held standards of excellence for that specific varietal, or a particular region,” Miranda says. “But with cannabis, we’re working with a complex set of categories, each of which may have their own unique criteria. For example, in flower and concentrates, flavor and aroma are some of the primary assessment considerations; but what about topicals, where efficacy and ingredients are the most impactful attributes? Or edibles, where flavor and effect are key drivers of quality, but aroma may be less important?”
Accordingly, the team at Budist has identified secondary characteristics that are key in the evaluation of specific products: Vapes, for example, are evaluated for flavor and effect, but also functionality of the hardware, while papers and packing are important considerations for pre-rolls and integration of the emulsion drive success in beverages.
“We’ve developed an in-depth rubric to help score each category,” Miranda says. “At the same time, we’re working to standardize not only assessment criteria, but also tasting techniques by systematizing the use of best-in-class devices across our assessment protocol.”
Following again in the footsteps of the wine industry, Budist uses this focused system of scoring and assessment to guide judging in some of the cannabis industry’s leading product competitions. In addition to serving as the judging partner for the California State Fair’s California Cannabis Awards the last two years, Budist has most recently partnered with leading industry event organizer MJBiz to launch the MJBowl, the first-ever bi-coastal cannabis competition.
“The MJBowl recognizes product excellence in two of the country’s most important and legendary markets: California and New York,” says Sheltraw, who has tapped a team of experts in each state to serve as judges for the competition. While the MJBowl doesn’t pit products from each state against each other, it does mark a pivotal moment for an industry shackled by a patchwork of state-by-state regulations. “This is the first step toward developing a national marketplace, standardizing assessment criteria and establishing quality markers across states and categories,” she says.
While it’s no surprise that the cannabis industry has embraced Budist’s mission to elevate the cannabis industry, the company has also gotten the attention of major names in the wine industry. Ian Cauble, who has earned the wine industry’s highest level of certification as a Master Sommelier from the Court of Master Sommeliers and founder of The Caubleist, a wine media and review platform, is one of the wine industry’s most notable figures and has been watching Budist closely.
He says, “A structured review system like what Budist is building can help consumers navigate an overwhelming landscape of strains and producers, but it’s equally important that those reviews describe the experience—the aromatics, flavor and effect—not just the number of points or the THC content. Cannabis, like wine, is rooted in chemistry, terroir and craftsmanship. Helping people understand why something feels or tastes a certain way is what builds real connoisseurship. I think Budist is taking meaningful steps toward that future, creating a trusted guide in a space that’s maturing rapidly. It’s exciting to watch an entire culture of taste and discernment take shape.”
With its focus on celebrating quality through professionally managed competitions, 50 years from now we may look back on programs such as the MJBowl as the cannabis industry’s version of the Judgment Of Paris, and the Budist 100-point scale as impactful to this industry as Parker’s was to wine.
I’ll drink to that.
This story was originally published in issue 52 of the print edition of Cannabis Now.
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