You've smelt it, wafting sweetly across the park, floating over the fence from the pumping party next door, rising to greet you off the plane at Schiphol Airport. Is that a hint of pine? With an undertone of blackberry? Ah, yes, it's the unmistakable complexity of gourmet cannabis.

For an emerging generation of herb elitists, the generic skunk sold on street corners - the plonk of the cannabis world - no longer hits the spot. These media executives, creative professionals and party people choose to have their executive brain functions impaired by only the best brands of cannabis: AK47, Charas, Kali Mist - vintage weeds that represent the summit of 25 years of selective breeding and artisan horticulture.

"Why fly economy?" says Samuel, 34, who works as a graphic designer for the music industry. "Connoisseur varieties are for those who want to smoke but don't want to be monged out or fall unconscious under a radiator." He regularly buys Northern Lights and Charas from a specialist London dealer who delivers via moped, his wares lovingly clingfilmed and neatly compartmentalised in a plastic Argos toolbox.

At £150-£200 per ounce, it's not cheap but for Samuel high-grade weed is a marker of taste. Bringing a button-bag of crisp, silver-tufted Northern Lights to a party gets him attention. Even bringing it to work can even be productive. "You can get things done on this kind of weed. Deals, creative work, sharing ideas. It dissolves egos and makes everyone happy."

Cannabis growing techniques have reached a level of artistry on a par with the wine industry. The two main plant varieties – Sativa and Indica – have been rarefied and blended into hundreds of exotic strains and hybrids. Each has its own look, taste, and quality of high. A recent upsurge in home growing have made these rarer varieties more widely available. Specialist dealers have stepped in. A thriving, happy, smiley 'cannaseur' marketplace is blossoming.

Yearly crops are considered with the same scrutiny as a wine buff might give a fine Alsatian white. Good vintage? Organically grown? Properly handled? How does it taste? Citrus? Peppery? Fruity?

The buzz though is key. A cannaseur knows the difference between getting stoned and getting high – and savours it. The effects of a good ganja way transcend the heavy mindless 'stoner' effects of street weed. Cerebral, lively, trippy, the four hour high of a supreme cannabis produces emotional qualities usually reserved for key life moments. "Soaring", "crystalline" and even "ecstatic" according to the rhapsodies of users.

No surprise really then that the connoisseurs often inhabit the creative industries: music, new media, advertising and film.

"It's great for gestating ideas, digging into your unconscious, getting shamanic," says 'Marcus', a 30 year old published novelist who chose to remain anonymous. He gets through a modest quarter of an ounce of AK47 a month. For him, a hit of sterling spliff is a great way to get into a creative flow. "But it's not so good for the actual writing itself. For me, smoke and work don't go well together."

Connoisseurship is partly a response to the low quality cannabis that has swamped the UK marketplace for years. While 3 million adults will have smoked cannabis in the last year, according to the Home Office, most will have inhaled garden variety, often adulterated, 'monkey bedding'.

"In drought periods, I've gone without, rather than smoke that crap," says Martin, 32, who works in post-production and effects in the film industry. He orders a quarter of an ounce of Durban Poison from his dealer in Richmond a week, who, in turn, sources it from some drug geeks with a organic plantation "somewhere in Sussex". A perfectionist, he used to buy from a website until the hi-tech police shut it down. "I only smoke organic that's been properly dried and cured."

Much cheap weed is 'schwag', an American term for low-grade grass,  bracken of stems and seeds, compacted into green bricks, and handed out in button bags on unsavoury street dealers. Headache-inducing with a chemical aftertaste, it's the cannabinoid equivalent of Happy Shopper Lager.

Worse though is 'soapbar', the "Oxo-cube" form of hashish which was the dominant form of pot in the UK for decades. For many people, growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was their first taste of cannabis, smoked furtively at school discos or passed around in graveyards as an aperitif to Thunderbird. Shame then it wasn't actually cannabis.

"Moroccan made soapbar is actually an adulterated facsimile, made from around 10% ground up 'vegetable matter', marijuana leaves, stems and twigs and 90% adulterant," says Nick Craston, editor of Red Eye Express, the UK's most respected cannabis magazine. "It's bound with bees wax. Nescafe coffee is added for colour, and then it's given a lick of turpentine for a shine. Basically it's crap. It's bad for you. Another situation where prohibition, in all its wisdom, is actually feeding the people garbage."

This garbage, and the status rewards of carrying good weed, is fuelling demand for a prestige market. "Once you've had a taste of the good stuff you won't go back," says Craston.

The Dutch of course are the gatekeepers of excellence. Many a UK smoker has had their passion ignited in the backstreets coffee shops of Amsterdam. Every November, the city plays host to the international Cannabis Cup. Glassy-eyed devotees from all around the world gather to sample and rate the vintage crops. And stare at the floor. The best strains are crowned the connoisseurs choice of connoisseurs choices. The growers get international fame while the seeds are hocked online for around £140 for a bag of ten. 

Nick Craston has been on the select panel of judges twice. "You smoke and you smoke and you smoke. We had 44 strains of hash and grass to smoke, I think, in 5 days." The competitor weeds are rigorously evaluated. "You have to judge it on taste, strength, smell, burn and the actual taste before you smoke it." Olympian weed is also expected to look good. Buds are routinely coiffeured to increase score (all the top growers use bonsai scissors).

Strength is of course a key aspect of prize-winning green. Potency of cannabis, measured in THC content, has been rising steadily over the last decade. Street skunk is about 8% THC. White-knuckle varieties can hit 23% or more. The Ice-o-Later varieties, a super-strong form of Dutch hash made by a revolutionary ice water extraction technique, have won the Cannabis Cup many times and are much prized among cannaseurs.  They can reach up to 40% and comes with its own health warning: 'Experienced users only'.  "It was too much," says one user who posted a report on the web. "We had to give it back."

Higher strength equals a higher intensity of emotional high – but also a higher chance of paranoia and other bad trip type phenomena. Over a quarter of cannabis smokers report anxiety as a regular or occasional effect. Indeed, super-strong Dutch grass or nederweed has been the undoing of many a British stag party. The Dutch government are now considering treating nederweed as a new type of drug with its own legal bracket after many a curious tourist has ended up in a dimension not of their choosing.

"Tolerance is everything. If you lay off smoking for a while, it can really kick you off into the deep end," says Lawrence, 28, a city broker who uses high end cannabis to unwind at weekends. "We had a boy's night recently. I hadn't smoked for a month. Everyone was smoking, passing spliffs around. After twenty minutes, I had pulled a whitey." (a state of cannabis induced semi-consciousness accompanied by a distinctive bloodless skin tone). "It was embarrassing."

Few of these championship level varieties make it over to the UK in smokeable form but the highly treasured are legal to sell, import and buy, although cultivation is obviously a no-no.

The bulk of vintage cannabis is now home-grown. Many connoisseurs are in fact growers and enthusiasts. DIY hydroponic (soil-less) setups now cost less than £200 to install. The Internet is solid with blow-by-blow instructions on how to cultivate high yield, high strength varieties every 47 days. At overgrow.com, enthusiasts exchange tips, maintain grow blogs, and post impressive centrefolds of slender female plants with large glistening buds.

Where criminal syndicates used to smuggled ninebars stamped to the hulls of Jamaican dredgers or in the fuel tanks of lorries arriving from Morocco, now they factory-farm. "There's still smoke coming from elsewhere, particularly Holland," says Nick Craston of Red Eye Express, "But it's mediocre to home grown. But for gangsters, cannabis is still a big product. They still import huge amounts of commercial garbage. But the bulk of pot smokers and growers are not criminals."

Most connoisseur varieties are grown by proud enthusiasts and small co-operatives, in basements, cellars, and greenhouses. Leftovers from the low yield crops are passed around to friends and family or sold to a small customer base of fellow aficionados.

Personal cultivation is not without its dangers. Despite the declassification of cannabis to class 'C' and the use of warnings for possession of small amounts for 'personal use', the government is yet to set any guidelines on what constitutes 'personal use' for growers.

Also top drawer cannabis thrives under 24 hour halogen floodlights which guzzle electricity. The power companies now have their own 'FBI' divisions who track down anomalous pockets of high electricity use – often the result of a heavyweight hydroponics setup hacking into the local supply.

For many, the risk is worth it. They see growing as a sacred hobby and smoking as an antidote to the times. "You can see the damage that alcohol is doing to our society." says Nick Craston. "People get pissed up and go out looking for a fight. You get nice and stoned, you go out looking for Mars bars."

HIGHS

AK47 Named after number of days it takes to grow, this Sativa cross is famed for its crystalline feel-good high and smoky flavour. £150 per ounce

Charas Catch-all term for sticky black hash from the Himalayas. Favoured by Indian sadus and Soho graphic designers, it's hand-rubbed and exceptionally good. £210 per ounce

Strawberry Cough A legendary weed with a hint of ripe strawberries characterising its after-taste. Different people get different highs, from cerebral to dreamy. Very rare and usually not for sale. £300 per ounce (if you can get it)

G13 Super strong variety, stolen apparently from an American Government growing program - although that might just be marketing. Like America, very popular when it first appeared, but less fashionable now. £250 per ounce

LOWS

Skunk Generic hybrid pot, selectively bred by Californian horticulture legend 'Sadu Sam' who named it after its distinctive pungent odour. Earthy taste with spicey undertones, not very strong, nor cerebrally pleasing. £80 per ounce

Soapbar Analysis on this adulterated fake hashish has revealed topsoil, plastic, and even veterinary salt supplements. Tastes and smells like burning rubber. Avoid. £50 per ounce

Pollem Like olive oil, hashish has first, second and third pressings. Pollem is about the 10th pressing – a low grade hashish with a high wax content and a tarnished flavour. Soapbar in disguise. £120 per ounce

ENDS
© David McCandless