I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a snob when it comes to chocolate.
I blame my mother for imparting her taste for high-end dark chocolate onto me. I’m obsessed. I only eat milk chocolate in the midst of a sweet tooth binge or on Halloween; otherwise, it’s exclusively dark chocolate for me.
When it comes to edibles, I often find chocolate products lacking. The chocolate is dry, crumbly, overly sweet, or unbalanced and bitter. I usually stick with gummies to avoid disappointment; who wants shitty chocolate that tastes like weed extract?
All of this to say, I was more than a little suspicious when I got my hands on an Almond Sea Salt chocolate bar from Lady Gray Gourmet Medibles and Craft Cannabis in Alaska. But for the first time ever, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the chocolate and the taste of this bar.
Who is Lady Gray Medibles?
Lady Gray is a Soldotna-based cannabis company founded by Tasha Grossl. The company has grown craft cannabis flower and produced gourmet “medibles” for Alaskan consumers since 2017.
Medibles is a blend of medicine and edibles, meant to position the brand differently than the other edibles on the Alaskan cannabis market. These aren’t just about potency or getting ripped; they’re delicious, carefully crafted products designed to make people feel better.
All of Lady Gray’s edibles are made with full-spectrum non-butane cannabis extracts, and most of the flower they source is grown by their team. Lady Gray makes a few different types of edibles, but I have it on good authority that Lady Gray chocolate bars are a local favorite.
Lady Gray Chocolate Bar Review: Almond Sea Salt
The Packaging
If you like high-end chocolates, then you’re familiar with the packaging: a layer of designed paper wrapped around a tin-foil seal that holds the chocolate inside. Most dispensary chocolates only have one layer of packaging, just another indicator of low-quality chocolate.
But Lady Gray’s chocolate bar is packaged exactly as I’d expect: an outer layer with marketing copy and a child-proof zipper and a foil-wrapped inner layer, keeping the chocolate secure.
Packaging is more than just keeping a product safe; it sets the expectation for the experience. When you have to unwrap a layer of foil to get to the chocolate, it sets the scene for high-quality chocolate.
The Taste
The taste was where Lady Gray really won me over. The almond sea salt chocolate bar is actually delicious.
The bar itself has small pieces of almonds (not tooth-breaking ones!) and mouth-watering pops of sea salt, but it’s the chocolate that really shines. It’s slightly soft and just creamy enough to melt in your mouth.
In my initial notes for this review, I wrote “would actually just buy and eat this chocolate.” When it comes to high-quality dark chocolate, iykyk, and Lady Gray knows.
It’s worth noting that Lady Gray uses “non-GMO, ethically and sustainably sourced ingredients” for their chocolate. With such a convoluted and controversial supply chain, this is an extra step that businesses don’t have to make – but it makes a difference when they do. I think ethically-sourced chocolate is like ethically raised meats; you can taste the difference when there’s no needless suffering.
The Effects
This Lady Gray chocolate bar is marked as “anytime”, meaning it shouldn’t have incredibly invigorating or overwhelmingly sedating effects. I felt it more on the calming/ sedating side of the scale, but it wasn’t instant naptime.
This chocolate bar takes a little while to kick in, and the effects linger for hours. It made me feel lazy and easy-going. I had “go with the flow” energy, as long as the flow wasn’t going too quickly.
The high was incredibly physical and very little cerebral. I felt like my body was floating when I was lying down, and I was perfectly content to stay where I was, wherever that was. My couch was the safest option after enjoying this, although I did have an ample window of 90 – 120 minutes before I actually felt anything.
It was a slow-feeling high; it crept on slowly, it lingered, and it made me feel like my brain and my body were moving slowly.
It’s not quite a sleepy-time edible; my eyes weren’t sliding shut without any input from my brain. But for me, it’s very much a lazy-day kind of edible, the perfect indulgence on a rainy Saturday going to see the new Jackass movie in theaters or binge on a new video game.
A Hidden Gem in Alaska
My visit to Alaska to explore the cannabis market was full of surprises. The quality of the products on the market here is not widely discussed, but time and time again I was taken aback by the quality of the flower, the infusions, and the options available to consumers here.
This almond sea salt chocolate bar is one of the best chocolate edibles I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying. It’s a darn shame it’s only available in Alaska, but if you find yourself in the Great White North, search out Lady Gray chocolate bars and other medibles; you won’t be disappointed.
