![](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/goldsealgrow-1-1.jpg\")
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I\u2019m at a warehouse grow on the industrial outskirts of San Francisco \u2014 inside a metal shipping container that\u2019s been converted into the grow room for a massive pheno hunt<\/a> \u2014 and I\u2019m practically suffocating on a cacophonous cloud of competing terpene<\/a> profiles. There\u2019s barely enough room to shuffle past the dense indoor forest of pungent plants (more than 100 all in full, sticky, aromatic bloom) and as I do, robust colas brush against my beard, catch on the buttons of my shirt and drag against the denim of my jeans, painting my body in their aggressive fragrance.<\/p>\n Leading the way is Neil Dellacava, co-owner and co-founder of Gold Seal SF<\/a>, a boutique cannabis company growing some of the tastiest and most potent flowers in a city with no shortage of quality crops. As we slowly work our way to the far end of the thick tangle of green, he ticks off evocative pheno names like \u201cMangosteen\u201d and occasionally stops to show me an especially promising candidate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe future is in the genetics,\u201d he says. \u201cThe most important thing we want to do is develop our strains and grow quality weed; if it doesn\u2019t look good, it doesn\u2019t go out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood\u201d is a distinct understatement for how these plants look \u2014\u00a0each one a sparkling, trichome-dazzled bud porn centerfold in the making, but Dellacava eyes them with a hypercritical lens, finding flaws in nearly each one \u2014\u00a0too much stretch, not enough density, not \u201cloud\u201d enough.<\/p>\n He has a clear vision of what he\u2019s looking for, and he knows most of these plants won\u2019t live up to that ideal: This test batch represents two or three testers from 60 distinct phenos of more than 20 strains \u2014 by the end of the process, all but eight plants will have been eliminated.<\/p>\n But like most pheno hunters, Gold Seal follows \u201cHighlander\u201d rules; ultimately, \u201cthere can be only one.\u201d<\/p>\n Dellacava is a San Francisco native with a nearly lifelong passion for cannabis and years of professional involvement in the city\u2019s ever-changing market.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in Presidio Heights and\u00a0I went to private school. I\u2019m not from the Sunset District, I\u2019m not a Cookies guy,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I always had good weed.\u00a0When I went down to LA for college, I got my card when I was 18 and I always knew I wanted to be a part of the cannabis industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside Dellacava, the leadership at Gold Seal includes new partner Tyson Graham and co-founder Aaron Flynn, who also serves as the president of the San Francisco chapter of the Cannabis Grower\u2019s Association<\/a> and the head of the Leadership team for the San Francisco Cannabis Licensing Group<\/a>. Flynn is a business major with a laid back demeanor and the imposing physique of a Marine Corps veteran.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in Minnesota, in a pretty conservative household, and right out of high school I joined the Marine Corps. Did a tour in Iraq in \u201903 and a tour in Afghanistan in \u201904,\u201d Flynn says. \u201cI\u2019m really proud of my service, but I was really\u00a0really\u00a0<\/i>ready to move away from the military. I was very disenfranchised with a lot of things that had gone on \u2014\u00a0a lot of things I\u2019d done, participated in and been forced to do.\u201d<\/p>\n He said it was his desire to get \u201cas far away as possible from the military-industrial complex\u201d that took him to the Emerald Triangle, specifically Ferndale, just south of Eureka.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to go to business school and decompress, but both the mentality of the people and the high quality of the medicine up there really helped us integrate back into society,\u201d he said. \u201cSo me and three other veterans pooled our resources and bought some rural property and grew outdoor, then greenhouse and indoor \u2014\u00a0I cut my teeth and got my Ivy League education up in Humboldt, then started looking at San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Dellacava, Flynn was serious about getting away from the illicit market and into the nascent legal industry, and he saw the city as a way to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to throw random numbers out, so I\u2019ll just say the majority \u2014\u00a0the\u00a0vast\u00a0<\/i>majority \u2014 of the product that\u2019s grown up in these rural areas goes out of state. There\u2019s no legitimate consumer market there: There\u2019s 30,000 people in the whole town and 140,000 people in the whole county,\u201d Flynn says. \u201cEven though we were working with distributors and middle men, it was hard to really come to grips with the fact that we weren\u2019t necessarily working with the dispensary patients we wanted to. San Francisco, on the other hand, has a huge consumer market.\u201d<\/p>\n A chance meeting at a grow supply store in the city planted the seeds of a business partnership, and soon Flynn and Dellacava were dialing in strains, like their flagship flower, Cherry Cheesecake, an indica-dominant hybrid created by crossing Cherry Pie<\/a> with Kimbo Kush.<\/p>\n A name that enticing might seem destined to overpromise and underwhelm, but one pull from a freshly rolled cone unravels a ribbon of bright fruit sweetness braided into a rich, cheesy pungency that invigorates my senses and demands a second taste \u2014\u00a0it only gets better. The flowers are well-cured and the smoke is exceptionally smooth, allowing for full expression of the beautifully balanced flavor profile.<\/p>\n The flower\u2019s aesthetics are practically flawless: vibrant orange pistils set against the trichome-frosted lime green of a dense but natural bud structure.<\/p>\n I walk through a Cherry-Cheesecake-choked grow room in Gold Seal SF\u2019s converted shipping container, inhaling lungfuls of its rich, tangy sweetness and reflecting on the vibrant living beauty sprawled out before me. I pause to admire an especially well-developed cola; its arching structure almost seems aspirational, like it\u2019s reaching out towards me. As I touch the tip of my index finger to the crown of the cola, a vision of Michelangelo\u2019s \u201cThe Creation of Adam\u201dflashes in my mind \u2014 the almost touching fingertips of God and Adam\u2026\u00a0then I think of\u00a0E.T.\u00a0<\/i>healing people with his glowing fingertip.<\/p>\n \u201cOuuuuch,\u201d I rasp, which Dellacava politely ignores.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now we have a problem: We don\u2019t have enough cannabis for all the dispensaries we\u2019re working with, let alone opening up more and more accounts,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a good problem to have.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s still a problem, one Flynn says the company is tackling through gradual but consistent growth.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re gonna turn this building into the [cherry] cheesecake factory,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n I\u2019m visiting at a crucial turning point for the industry, roughly halfway through 2017, with the kickoff of full recreational regulation in California casting longer and longer shadows.<\/a> The window is closing for companies trying to get their practices and paperwork together for full compliance, and Dellacava says it\u2019s a given that many growers operating today won\u2019t be around the same time next year \u2014\u00a0some of them already know it.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got guys coming up to me like, \u2018I know I\u2019m not gonna\u2019 make it, bro, do you want my space?\u2019 I\u2019ve seen that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Others are less self-aware.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of guys are like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re doing the 2018 thing now?\u2019 Yeah, it\u2019s happening and you\u2019re pretty much late,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel like we\u2019ve been at the forefront of this movement for compliance, and we\u2019ve converted a lot of our friends to the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n And while some cannabis cultivators are hanging up the towel come New Year\u2019s Day 2018, others are looking to expand as big and quick as possible \u2014\u00a0both Flynn and Dellacava think that\u2019s a\u00a0big\u00a0<\/i>mistake.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see all the people who are scaling massively, and we worry about scaling too big and the quality suffers,\u201d Dellacava says.<\/p>\n Flynn echoes that concern and stresses the need for measured growth.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to scale thoughtfully. So many people are focused on 22,000 square feet; it\u2019s the largest license they\u2019re going to be issuing, so that\u2019s what some people are looking for,\u201d he says. \u201cThey might be going from 20 lights to 200 or 300, and moving that quickly there\u2019s just huge obstacles to quality; that\u2019s where you go from boutique handcrafted quality to commercially produced, just like that \u2014\u00a0overnight. If you take time to go from 20 lights, to 60, to 120, to 240, you can dial in the new techniques and methods in a scaled way.\u201d<\/p>\n But Flynn also says that there\u2019s plenty of room for all kinds of (compliant) growers under the new legal market, including those with big grows that won\u2019t need\u00a0any\u00a0<\/i>branding.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of different places for people to fit in,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna see the Central Valley and Salinas really mass produce stuff that goes in joint packs \u2014\u00a0what\u2019s most important to them is scaling up and getting massive.\u201d<\/p>\n But for a brand like Gold Seal that\u2019s focused on premium quality cannabis, branding is a matter of basic necessity. That means creating an association between their brand name and quality, which means getting the complex balance that sets boutique quality apart from the rest of the field.<\/p>\n Before leaving, Dellacava asks me if I\u2019d like to pop some seeds. I pick out a pack of seeds with a picture of Andrew Dice Clay on it and wrap them in moistened paper towels before putting them in a plastic bag, which I label with a marker.<\/p>\n I think of the sprouts that will soon grow from those seeds, and of the hellish Darwinian Hunger Games they\u2019re destined to play in: The pheno hunt is merciless, and the chance a seed from my bag will survive is slim to none \u2014\u00a0but a chance is a chance.<\/p>\n I place the bag on the counter and pat it gently \u2014\u00a0good luck little dudes, you\u2019ll need it.<\/i><\/p>\n Indica dominant hybrid (Cherry Pie x Kimbo Kush) Originally published in\u00a0Issue 28<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.\u00a0<\/em>LEARN MORE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0have you tried top-shelf California cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Gold Seal: San Francisco Growers Look Towards the Light<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at a warehouse grow on the industrial outskirts of San Francisco \u2014 inside a metal shipping container that\u2019s been converted into the grow room for a massive pheno hunt \u2014 and I\u2019m practically suffocating on a cacophonous cloud of competing terpene profiles. There\u2019s barely enough room to shuffle pastContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":24639,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,5,1556,85,2629,2111,2900,107],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24640,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24638\/revisions\/24640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Gold](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/goldsealgrow-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Phenohunt](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/phenohunt-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Gold](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/goldsealclones-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCherry Cheesecake<\/h4>\n
\nFlowering time: 9 weeks
\nPotency: 24.1% THC
\nTerpene profile: Sweet red fruit and cheesy kush notes<\/p>\n
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\nRead More: Gold Seal: San Francisco Growers Look Towards the Light<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"