What it's like to attend a $125 marijuana pairing dinner where guests eat and get high

In February 2014, one month after Colorado fully legalized marijuana, Wolf launched his company Cultivating Spirits, which hosts marijuana pairing dinners across the state. Like a wine tasting, the events mix gourmet foods and ganja, and cater to a sophisticated audience.

"I knew that cannabis, from a connoisseur's standpoint, had the same qualities as wine," Wolf tells Business Insider. Plus, he says, "you can treat cannabis just like wine. Some people are going to buy boxed wine. But other people like the education and experience behind it."

Here's what it's like to attend one of Cultivating Spirits' events.

During a Cultivating Spirits events, the ganja connoisseurs come to you.

Marijuana pairing dinners most often take place in people's homes. That's because Colorado law prohibits marijuana consumption in public, and Cultivating Spirits does not have a permit to sell like a dispensary would. Tourists sometimes hold events in Airbnb rentals.

Wolf talks to the host before the event to find out the location, how many people will attend (Cultivating Spirits places a cap at 12), and the desired vibe.

Wolf then visits a dispensary in the area and talks to a budtender, who has an intimate knowledge of the inventory, to find out what's good and in stock.

Wolf, who considers himself the world's first pot sommelier, will buy samples of the marijuana strains he likes most based on their smell, taste, strength, and intended effect.

After he samples the strains, Wolf sends descriptions of his top three picks to the chef overseeing the event. The chef will create a menu based on the strain profiles.

An untrained nose might think all marijuana smells like roadkill. But weed, like wine, has a variety of smells. The fragrant oils come from organic compounds, called terpenes.

Before the event, guests are chauffeured by limo to a dispensary, where they buy the three strains to pair with the dinner. This way, the drug never changes hands between Wolf and his clients.

When guests sit down to dinner, one of the first things they do is familiarize themselves with the plant. They break it up with their fingers, smell it, and examine its fuzzy hairs.

The group takes their first, ceremonial hit off the pipe together.

Thought most guests will be experienced smokers, Wolf walks them through how to take the perfect hit. He encourages them to light the material around the sides of the pipe, rather than torching the whole bowl, in order to preserve green stuff for the next hit.

There's even a secret to the inhalation: "It's not about how big of a hit you take, it's about how big you expand your lungs," Wolf says.

Next the chef performs a cooking demonstration before his (now captivated) audience.

For their main course, guests might enjoy a rib-eye steak with chile relleno, a glass of 2013 Malbec, and a toke of the popular marijuana strain Gorilla Glue.

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Dessert might be a dark chocolate ganache torte with a raspberry-infused sauce (pictured below), paired with a new strain, such as Platinum Covered Girl Scout Cookies.

People come to the events for different reasons, the same way they do with wine tastings, Wolf says: "You have people who will ask questions and questions, and you have the people that just want to get drunk."

The event lasts about three hours, including the dispensary pit stop and the meal. The Cultivating Spirits experience starts at $1,250 for 10 people, or $125 a head.

Wolf hopes events like these will help attract newcomers to the burgeoning legal marijuana market. "This is how we're going to tap into mainstream America," he says.

What it's like to attend a $125 marijuana pairing dinner where guests eat and get high

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