Warren Bobrow: Bestselling Author & Cocktail Whisperer Reveals the Secret Ingredient

Warren Bobrow: Bestselling Author & Cocktail Whisperer Reveals the Secret Ingredient for Crafting Cannabis Beverages

Warren Bobrow: You don't need to have 50 ingredients in a drink to have it be delicious. As I've learned, simplicity is the key, and it's the techniques that you use to make those ingredients. It's not just orange juice — it's splitting the oranges and roasting them in the oven until they caramelize, letting them cool, and then juicing them. Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellen Finney. This week we've got a very special guest, Warren Bobrow, bestselling author and master mixologist. Warren, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Warren Bobrow: I'm pretty fantastic, and I'm going to enjoy a little bit of this Rudy's Cool Whip from New Mexico. Bryan Fields: I love it. For our audio listeners, they'll get a really good visual for that aspect. Kellen, how are you doing? Kellen Finney: I'm doing really well. Excited to talk to Warren, really excited to talk about cannabis drinks — I know it's a topic close to your heart, Bryan — so I'm just really excited to talk to Warren and dive into his story and Klaus and all the fun stuff he's been doing in the industry. How are you, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm excited. Obviously beverages are one of my favorite aspects of the industry, and I know everyone has pretty strong feelings one way or another about them, which is everyone's own right. But I think Warren's perspective — mixing the blend as a mixologist and an author — is what gives it a unique taste, because his combination of flavors is on a whole other parallel than most people are anticipating when they hear this conversation. But Warren, before we get into the specifics, we've got to get it on the record — a little East Coast/West Coast. I know you're fond of California, but realistically, where does your loyalty lie — East Coast or West Coast? Warren Bobrow: Oh, absolutely — in Menlo, New Jersey, in my 1804 home, which is full of ghosts. I just heard footsteps right across the floor. I called up there to see if anyone was upstairs, and no, there's no one upstairs. Bryan Fields: I don't know if in your past the ghosts have communicated back down, but that would probably make me put the pipe down if I started hearing ghosts personally. So Warren, for listeners unfamiliar with you, can you give a little background about yourself, please? Warren Bobrow: Let's see, I am an eight-time failure — no, it's true, I've had many lives in my short 62 years. I started smoking cannabis at age 12, and I knew very quickly that I was going to be a great disappointment to my family, so they let me go and find my own way. It was a circuitous route, but I discovered myself only about 11 years ago, which is pretty good — at like 51 years old I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. It's been a really hard path ever since. It was easier to work in the corporate world when I got a paycheck every week, and now every day is a growing concern. But I'm confident in my ability, and the proof is in the pudding. But none of that would have taken place if I hadn't written this in 2015 — it came out in 2016 — and no one had ever heard of a cannabis cocktail before that. Bryan Fields: Yeah, why don't you give our listeners who aren't watching a perspective of what you just showed? Warren Bobrow: We'll start off with Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails and Tonics. I've written six books. My first book was Apothecary Cocktails, and my publisher, Fairwinds Press up in Massachusetts, told me at the time that the only ingredient I couldn't use in Apothecary Cocktails was cannabis. But when I started doing historical research for why I'd write a book on apothecary cocktails in the first place — I have a family background in snake oil. My grandfather created a product called Geritol. Geritol was meant for "iron-poor blood" — no one had iron-poor blood, it was a marketing thing. All it was was ethyl alcohol, caramel coloring, and flavorings, but everyone had it in their medicine chest. My own mother gave it to me as a boy in the 1960s before breakfast — a tablespoon or two, about 50% alcohol, or 100 proof. It was a good way of starting the day. I worked in traditional liquor for many years after I lost my corporate job, and I loved it — absolutely loved it — until it loved me too much, and I haven't had a cocktail since 2018. I worked as an international brand ambassador for a boutique spirits company centered in Sweden. They showed me the world — I made cocktails for people all over the world. But it caught up with me, and I was 75 pounds heavier and probably going to die from drinking. So I quit the day drinking and the night drinking, and I decided to join the cannabis business full-time. As I said, I smoked since I was 12 and was a disappointment to everyone because of the very conservative area I grew up in, and it took me a long time to become the Warren I always wanted to be. This is what did it — we're on, I think, the tenth printing, and it's a hit. Bryan Fields: What year did you first publish the cannabis cocktail book? Warren Bobrow: 2016. It came out right after legalization. Bryan Fields: So were you in the middle of contemplating giving up alcohol and fully focusing on cannabis? Warren Bobrow: No, not at all. What inspired me to do this was — I was in New York City having dinner with my then-wife, now ex-wife, and I wasn't ever a really big drinker, but I enjoyed a cocktail with dinner. I smelled some weed smoke blowing in through the front door of the restaurant, and I had a fat joint in my pocket of some BC bud — I'd been in Vancouver the week before and stuffed the bud in my jacket and went through customs, no problem, probably wouldn't recommend that. I lit up my joint outside and smoked it with people who were smoking their own, and they said they'd never smelled or tasted anything like that. At that moment I noticed a ring of people circling around us, and they turned out to be policemen, and they arrested me. I spent the next 48 hours in the caring concern of the New York City Police Department — they sent me to the Tombs and then out to Rikers. A very intrigued gentleman came up to me at Central Booking and said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I just got caught smoking a joint in the street" — this was like 2013 — and he said, "Don't worry, everyone gets caught smoking weed, you'll be out in 48 hours," which I was. But at that moment it crystallized that I needed to write a book about cannabis that was non-confrontational. When you smoke a cannabis joint, everyone knows your business — they can smell it a mile away. I realized that if I wrote a book involving medical-level cocktails that had cannabis in them, no one had to know your business, and that's where it started. Bryan Fields: I love the inspiration of the story and how you connected those dots. What I really want to ask now is — you have this idea, cannabis mocktails and cocktails using liquor, that's very niche-on-niche. Warren Bobrow: There was a cross which got me — people gave me a hard time. Bryan Fields: I can imagine. So you've got this idea, you bring it to a publisher — what is that first conversation like? Warren Bobrow: I'd written six books for my publisher in Massachusetts, and they were pretty conservative, but I wrote them a letter saying this is the book I wanted to write. I researched it — I went down to New Orleans, which I used to do every year for Tales of the Cocktail, and at the Pharmacy Museum on Royal Street I was doing a book signing for my book Bitters and Shrub Syrup Cocktails, and at that same time they were doing an exhibition on cannabis in early apothecaries. I knew what book I was going to write, and I sent an email to my editor and said, "This is going to be the next big thing" — that was 2015. They said I had one month to write this book — 60,000 words, one month. Bryan Fields: So was there pushback internally, any hesitation from their side? Warren Bobrow: It was bad. If you look at my Amazon reviews, there's one in particular that stands out — it's 5,000 words, and it was a takedown. It came out right before Christmas of 2016 and killed my sales. I thought my publisher was going to take it off the shelf. It was hateful and demeaning and jealous — deeply jealous — and the person who wrote it should have known better. But I'm still standing, thankfully. Bryan Fields: So when you first drafted it, was there a decision about whether to include alcohol or just do straight cannabis cocktails? Warren Bobrow: I'm known as the Cocktail Whisperer, known for building drinks that are delicious with minimal ingredients — two or three at most. It's the techniques you use. Prior to the corporate world I was a trained chef — went to culinary school, ACF-trained — worked in France, New York, Portland Maine, Charleston South Carolina, Scottsdale Arizona. I found I had a talent for flavor. Fast forward — I pickled myself and was going to die, but I had to figure out how to take my talent for flavor and create something that wouldn't require me to drink. But when I wrote Cannabis Cocktails, I was still drinking — until 2018. So many of the recipes in the book have alcohol in them, and they're all craft spirits — the best money can buy — infused with massive amounts of THC. The drinks are about 250 milligrams of THC; you're not required to drink the entire drink. We didn't have technology like a Magical Butter machine or a LEVO infuser back then. I learned to be a saucier by double-boiling, reductions, and other culinary techniques, and translated those into drinks. I appeared on a live TV cocktail show and destroyed them on live television — I made a punch with barrel-proof bourbon, roasted blood orange juice, and a Belgian lambic for fizz, and it just destroyed them. I think they canceled the show two weeks later. Everyone had the punch, and I was saying don't have more than two, and people were slugging down five — there were 2,800 milligrams of THC in the punch. Bryan Fields: Sounds like a good time — memorable, certainly. I can see the New Orleans inspiration — seems like a hand grenade on steroids. Warren Bobrow: Exactly. But it had really fine liquors in it — the barrel bourbon was cask strength, just the best quality. I think we won gold at LA Spirits this year for Klaus. Bryan Fields: Talk to us about layering the flavors. Do you start with an idea or concept first — is it the strain of weed first, or the bourbon first? Warren Bobrow: The first thing I do is think about terping forward. With Klaus, my beverage, it's Hippie Crasher terpenes, an indica-leaning hybrid. That's really important to me — having a cannabis drink that actually has cannabis in it, that smells like cannabis and kind of tastes like it too — not in the "green" way but in a positive way. I love simple drinks — two or three ingredients. Klaus is only three ingredients. I work with a guy named Chris Anderson, who really understood how to formulate my ideas into a beverage that's the best on the market. I've tasted everything out there and I'm still looking for something that tastes amazing. One drink that is amazing belongs to my business partner — it's the Apple Live Resin called Malice. I love Malice — it's like your childhood in a can, except it has weed in it. Bryan Fields: Let's go through some of the flavor combinations in the products, because I think when people hear "cannabis beverage" they assume seltzers. Warren Bobrow: Seltzers are fine, but I want mine with a corned beef sandwich. I wanted my seltzer to taste like something that complements food, and unfortunately most products on the market suck. I spoke twice at the Cannabis Drinks Expo in San Francisco and told them right out loud that cannabis drinks suck — they're industrialized drinks with no bearing on an actual drink. The technology we use from Vertosa is the best in the world. We're doing things no one else has done, simply prepared with love. With Klaus, I was very much influenced by the Pacific Rim — we launched the product in California. It has an extra hot and spicy Jamaican-style ginger beer syrup from Pickett's, and that's the base. The lime purée comes from a company in France — up there they're super conservative so we can't put it on the label, but we call it our French lime purée. The third ingredient is mirin, a rice vinegar from Japan. There's a sweet and a dry mirin; we wanted the dry one because we're incredibly low-calorie — only 16 calories and 0.06 grams of sugar. It's super dry, hardly any sugar, hardly any calories, but it's a blast to drink because of the tang that comes through. If you put cannabis on the label, it should actually smell like the plant, not just say it has the plant in it. Bryan Fields: I'm ready to try a cocktail. Warren Bobrow: This doesn't have alcohol in it — you're free to add it if you like, I don't recommend it, but if you want to at home, I'm not going to tell you you can't. It would make an amazing ginger daiquiri — I'd use a rhum agricole from Martinique. The fact is, it's a delicious base for a whole litany of cocktails, or drink it as is. I love it with Vietnamese food, Mexican food, tacos — squeeze fresh lime over your tacos and have a sip of Klaus. The name of the drink is the Mezzaro — named for a guy called Mezz Mezzrow, a hip-cat Jewish guy who lived in Harlem and brought tons of weed up from Mexico in the '30s and '40s and sold it to the Black community and jazz musicians, because he fancied himself a jazz musician. A well-rolled cannabis cigarette was often called a "mezz roll," because asking for a joint or reefer, even though cannabis wasn't illegal yet, was frowned upon and you'd probably get detained. Mezzrow played with Sidney Bechet and was Louis Armstrong's weed dealer — just a good old guy. When he got arrested in Harlem, he put "Negro" on the arrest warrant because he didn't identify with white people at all — he identified with Black people and jazz. That's why we named the drink the Mezzaro, after good old Mezz. Bryan Fields: How many iterations did it take you before you were comfortable taking that mix in a can to market? Warren Bobrow: One. Bryan Fields: Wait — one iteration? So you knew right away exactly the ingredients you wanted? Warren Bobrow: Well, I'd used those ingredients in my cocktails for years — when I'd go to Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans I'd make the welcome punch and always use that French lime purée because they sponsored me — it's the best. Bryan Fields: So you drew on inspiration from previous experiences, and the THC piece came after? Warren Bobrow: No — I always wanted to make weed cocktails that got you destroyed, nothing to do with anything else. If they tasted great and were well-prepared — everything comes from love, and you'll know that when you cook: if your hands are warm and reiterating good feelings from your heart, your food will taste good. If you're in a bad mood, your hands are cold, and you're never going to be able to even make a scrambled egg — it's just going to suck. Bryan Fields: How many of these drinks should one drink? Warren Bobrow: I'd say two. Drink half of it, see how you feel, wait an hour or so, drink the other half, and if you need more you can always have more — you can never take it away, though. That's the one challenge with beverages people push back on — they're not sure what to expect to feel. Bryan Fields: I think with booze people have an understanding of the feeling. Warren Bobrow: One eight-ounce can is like two two-ounce cocktails. So two cans is okay, maybe a third — that's where the second can comes in. There's always a lag period, but it's only three or four minutes because of the live resin — it's really fast, but not overwhelming. Ten milligrams seems like a lot, but many seltzers out there are pushing 100 milligrams, so it's a nice metered experience. I always say it's conversational, leading to relaxation, leading to a little more conversation, leading to the best night's sleep you've ever had in your life. Bryan Fields: I love that — put that on a billboard. Warren Bobrow: Well, I can't say it does anything — I can say it leads to relaxation and promotes sleep. Bryan Fields: You only had one iteration with the liquids — did you have more iterations in terms of choosing a strain? Are you strain-specific? Warren Bobrow: Really great question — I am strain-specific on the next two SKUs. We're hopefully going to work with Sonoma Hill Farms — I want to work with Pink Jesus, which is a THCV strain. I love THCV. I'm in the medical program here in New Jersey for my eyes — I have glaucoma — so I'm looking for something low-THC, high-CBD, and the THCV works really nicely on my eyes; I can feel the pressure dissolve. The drink with THCV is in formulation and ready to go, and I want to do a Delta-9 version too, because then I could sell it all over the United States. Bryan Fields: Are there any flavor combinations you're chasing that you haven't put together yet? Warren Bobrow: I have two SKUs planned. One's a zombie — doesn't have rum in it but tastes like a classic zombie, with 10 milligrams of THC. I'm also looking to do a drink reminiscent of the pre-Prohibition 1920s, with bergamot and apricot — bergamot's a citrus that's in Earl Grey, and apricot has that nice tanginess. Bryan Fields: Can THC beverages rival alcoholic beverages? Warren Bobrow: Oh, I hope so. There's nothing worse than a drunk, nothing worse than a hangover, nothing worse than a drunk with a bad attitude — I used to be all those things. Bryan Fields: What do you think is needed to shorten the gap and get THC accelerated? Warren Bobrow: I think what's needed is more people embracing cannabis as something that isn't the big bad wolf it's been portrayed as. Look at me — I'm successful. I may not be wealthy, but I've created great success from very little, and cannabis helped me get there. The secret to life is doing what you love and trying to earn a living at it. Bryan Fields: What do you say to people who knock cannabis beverages, saying they don't hit quick enough? Warren Bobrow: I don't know what else they're drinking — they're drinking lousy stuff. There's a lot of products on the market, some quite excellent. I tried Fable recently — I thought that was delicious, reminded me of a Clear Creek eau de vie of Douglas fir, like walking through a pine forest barefoot. But there are so many out there that just absolutely suck, made with terrible ingredients — white sugar, who uses white sugar? Many of them do. Bryan Fields: Would that be listed on the label — is that something to look for? Warren Bobrow: Yes, it would say what kind of sugar. Mine — let me check — Ginger, Lime and Rice Vinegar with THC infusion, that's it. Total sugars: less than 0.5 grams, basically zero. Bryan Fields: I think if you add white sugar, it has to say "X grams added" versus natural sugar — that's under the sugar line on the label. Warren Bobrow: Yeah, this says total sugars less than 0.5 grams — zero. I think that's really important, and as you grow older and start taking care of what you eat and drink, it matters a lot. Bryan Fields: Do you think the rising trend in non-alcoholic beverages is beneficial for consumers looking for an alcohol replacement who might eventually try THC? Warren Bobrow: You have to be a hermit not to want at least something that gives you a little smile at the end of the day. If you follow history, things haven't always been so good, and drinking helps make it a little better. A well-prepared cannabis cocktail is the same, except you're not running outside to smoke a joint where everyone knows your business. Hopefully people drink a little less alcohol, because alcohol is poisonous — I worked in it for years and I'm a poster child for day drinking. I was a rum judge for the Ministry of Rum — you'd drink 50 sugarcane rums before 11 a.m., pretty hardcore. I didn't see people having a real long lifespan, and when my liver started to hurt, I knew it was time to get out. I listened to my body, and it told me to stop, and I did. Bryan Fields: Do you have any favorite U.S. locations you think are underappreciated for the cannabis industry? Warren Bobrow: Absolutely — Albuquerque, New Mexico. They grow it indoors, but it tastes like it's been grown outdoors because they grow in natural soil — it's amazing. It's humbling for me to smoke stuff that's this good when everyone says California or Portland, Maine is the best. I've been working on an article for Cannabis Cactus Magazine on cannabis in New Jersey, and it just sucks. I spent 75 bucks on five pre-rolls that looked and smelled good, well-rolled, but something inside was lacking — I think it's the curing. The curing is everything. Bryan Fields: So cannabis grown at 6,000 feet in a dry desert atmosphere, brought down to sea level in New Jersey with a lot of humidity, is like reintroducing it to a curing room? Warren Bobrow: Exactly — it's incredible. Every big-time grower I've spoken with says their ideal cultivation location would be a desert like New Mexico, where you don't have to deal with pests as heavily. Bryan Fields: So you don't have to implement pest mitigation protocols as heavily as in California, which gives a better product. My question is — when you decide to incorporate resin or THC infusion into your beverage, do you visit the farm first to see how they grow? Warren Bobrow: I wish — I'm not a wealthy man, so I don't have time to get that granular. But I've gotten samples from a number of well-connected growers, and those are the products I want to use — Swami Select, Sonoma Hill Farms — because I have relationships with the people who are the growers. It's not just about the flavors and styles but the people, and when you have a contact that goes beyond commerce, it becomes very personal. That's what I see in the cannabis industry — very emotional, very personal. Whereas with alcohol, people just get drunk and mean — with cannabis it's more like, "I'm on a tolerance break, I might be a little edgy, but that's just what it is." Bryan Fields: Do you foresee the future of cannabis being similar to wine, with certain regions known for certain things? Warren Bobrow: I'd love to see appellations in cannabis. I think in Mendocino they're getting very granular with that, similar to how the wine world has its own appellations tied to terroir in California — cannabis is very much identified with its own terroir too, when grown outdoors. We haven't seen a lot of cannabis grown in Napa Valley — the land's probably too valuable and there's a lot of conservatism — but push forward into Mendocino and Sonoma, there's a lot more, and then Humboldt, of course — that's a world unlike any other place in the U.S. Bryan Fields: Agreed. I actually met some cultivators who tried to grow closer to the wine region, and unfortunately for cannabis, the allowed pesticides are very strict, while in wine it's not regulated at all — so you get drift already embedded in the soil from pesticides wine producers use to increase crop yields. So if you plant in Sonoma County soil, you can come up with hot material you can't sell. Warren Bobrow: Yeah, I know, because I've heard this from people who manufacture edibles — they got specific strains of chocolate from Central America that had heavy metals in the soil, and they didn't know it until testing time. What do you do? I grew up on a biodynamic farm, so I'm very sensitive to the way I eat and the ingredients and materials I use. I think it's important to love what you eat, and hopefully it treats you well. Bryan Fields: Amen. What is the most expensive lesson you've learned? Warren Bobrow: Don't love your parents too much, because they're not going to do anything for you — mine disowned me. You know what that's like when you grow up in a family of multimillionaires, told every day you never have to worry, and then find out you've been disowned — that's pretty rough. But I'm smart, I'm tenacious, I'm potent, and I believe in myself. I may not always do a good job, but it's the best job I know how to do. Bryan Fields: Amen. Dream smoking session — three people, dead or alive? Warren Bobrow: Frenchy Cannoli, of course — sat next to him at a Ganjier event and learned more in that short time than in a lifetime, just about life. I interviewed him for Forbes; when his obituary was published in the New York Times, they linked to it, so it must have been relatively good. Second person — Jerry Garcia — "nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile." I'd love to share a joint with him — never had the chance, but I saw about 300 of his shows over the years. Third person — probably the person I smoked hash with in Ivory Coast, Africa, when I was 12 years old. I don't remember his name, but he handed me a cigarette with tobacco and hashish in it, and I got so high my whole jaw was numb. It was a memory I'll always remember because it was so totally forbidden, and yet there I was. Bryan Fields: When you got started in the cannabis industry, what did you get right, and what did you get wrong? Warren Bobrow: I got it right by creating something no one else had ever done. What I got wrong was trusting people too much — but I got out of it, and I'm still in it. It's a work in progress, and it's been challenging because so many companies are doing beverages and talking about success in pallets — I talk about success in four-packs. I wish my four-packs would turn into pallets, but they will — I believe in myself. Bryan Fields: If you could put a message on a billboard for billions of people to see — could be an image, a photo, a quote — what comes to mind? Warren Bobrow: What I'd put on a billboard is: good ingredients, simply prepared, with love. That's it — that's my mantra. Bryan Fields: Beautiful. All right, prediction time — as a master mixologist, how do you predict flavor profiles and consumer preferences will evolve over the next five years? Warren Bobrow: I hope they get simpler, with better-quality ingredients. You don't need 50 ingredients in a drink for it to be delicious — simplicity is key, and it's the techniques you use. It's not just orange juice — it's splitting the oranges and roasting them in the oven until they caramelize, letting them cool, and then juicing them. That's what sets me apart — I do everything everyone else does, it's just what I do to it that's different. I'd also like to see more terpenes in consumer products — Lemon Pledge has lemon terpene in it, and it makes you feel like cleaning everything in the house. When I smell that in sativa strains of cannabis, it makes me want to clean the entire house. I'd like to see more terpenes in more consumer products. Bryan Fields: Love it. Kellen, I'll have to agree with Warren. Kellen Finney: I'll have to agree with Warren, and I said this on a previous episode — a lot of these beverages went from idea straight to industrialization. Look at other beverage mainstays like Coca-Cola — founded over a hundred years ago in a garage, and it took forever to get to the scale they're at now, and they learned a lot along the way. I think you're going to see a lot of these companies that jumped straight from concept to industrial manufacturing fall by the wayside, exactly as Warren said, because the ingredients aren't high quality, and there's only so much crappy drink people can endure before they want something good. So in the next five years I think you'll see the cream rise to the top, and companies doing it the right way will expand their market share and grow. What do you think, Bryan? Bryan Fields: I'm really fascinated with the concept Warren shared about simplicity — just having three ingredients. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a label with 900 things and wondered why they're all necessary. Seeing just three ingredients made me feel more comfortable and trusting. I love that approach, layered on top of the love aspect you can feel from Warren's perspective in how he talks about the ingredients he's chosen. I hope consumers put aside their distrust of THC beverages, even just for a little while, to try products like yours, Warren, because I think it'll open their eyes to a world beyond alcohol and beyond smoking, if that's not their thing. Warren Bobrow: This is the drink that was in Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails and Tonics that directly influenced me to make the Mezzaro. It's a take on a ti' punch, the drink from Martinique you'd make with lime, rum, and cane sugar. I looked at this and said, this is Klaus — and it's in my book, which I wrote in 2015, published in 2016 — I had the idea all the way back then, and this is what it became. There are dreams that come true in life, and dreams we just have to work a little harder to make happen. Bryan Fields: I love it, and we should leave it at that. So Warren, for our listeners who want to get in touch, read your books, and try Klaus — where can they find you? Warren Bobrow: They should go to cocktailwhisperer.com — you get the overview of me from when I first started writing about liquor and spirits in 2010, right up to today. I've written for the Oxford Encyclopedia and things like that — it's all in there. Another place is drinkklaus.com, with two K's — D-R-I-N-K-K-L-A-U-S. If you're in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you can order Klaus for delivery — order today, have it tomorrow at your house. You can also find me on Instagram — it isn't overly political — @WarrenBobrow. I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn too — LinkedIn's a good place to be. Bryan Fields: Awesome, we'll link it all in the show notes. Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Warren Bobrow: Thank you.