FEATURE
It acts fast, and if you don’t dive right into an activity, you may end up on the wrong side of an ice cream tub or staring at your omnipresent mortality in the mirror. When stimulated, this strain is excellent for focus.
Orange Cookies from Pistil Point Farms, Portland, Oregon
AKA: No known aliases.
Backstory: A well-known favorite in the West, but out East it’s a trending strain. As limonene gets pegged for its uplifting powers, citrusy cultivars are staking out a market in New York, where selection is often based on potency rather than the finer details.
Type: Heady but clear, this hybrid hits you with happiness. The citron terpene balance keeps it from being sleepy and the THC level averaging about 18 percent is potent without pushing it. Now grown by multiple farms in California, Nevada and Oregon.
Genome: Orange Juice’s rich tangerine terps plus complex Girl Scout Cookies, queen of the cookie birthline, object of lust in over six Migos hits and is the nationwide favorite.
Attributes: This cookie family varietal has dense but short-cone shaped buds that carry a potent gummy bear fruitiness, wildly bold upon first inspection. As perfumed as a real orange, it almost tricks the nose. Notably there’s a piney-green citrus quality, as if a Meyer lemon tree were crossed with limes. Summery and fresh, there’s just a touch of sweet wood from Girl Scout Cookies’ earth notes. The aromatics come to a distinctly potent crescendo when you break it up. Trichome crystals carpet every surface of the flower, which is also generously draped in a rich orange-brown filament. Its taste profile reads like a cedar-tinged citrus that bridges into full-on floral fruit in the hit. Even in a mostly finished joint, the smoke is clean tasting, with that faint herbaceous and pleasantly leather-like aftertaste that comes from the carpet of terps. It acts fast, and if you don’t dive right into an activity, you may end up on the wrong side of an ice cream tub or staring at your omnipresent mortality in the mirror. When stimulated, this strain is excellent for focus.
Cost: $35 per eighth pretax, fair for its quality and potency. It’s well-trimmed and dense, and it fills a joint with fluffy delight.
Pair with: Almond cookies dipped in vanilla gelato, or a creamy, oil-bathed burrata with grilled bread and herbs. Increase the citrus appeal of an Aperol Spritz or sweeten up a bone-dry cider with Orange Cookies. It’s a spot-on aperitivo joint, stoking your hunger for a large meal and keeping you socially primed.
Great for: Instant munchies, long projects that require you to zoom in group dinners.
—Danielle Guercio