What’s The Score: Budist App Applies Wine Industry Metrics to Cannabis

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.”
*blowing app*. *Budist, the rating and review platform, has taken the
cannabis world by storm by adapting wine industry norms*

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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