The Blue Chip Story begins in 2008 in Santa Rosa, California. It was there that two biochemist majors from University of Davis California began hunting and cross breeding genotypes in an attempt to achieve an effect that would provide all the benefits of cannabis they loved and reduce some of the effects they weren’t keen on. They loved the relaxing, euphoric, and stress relieving properties of marijuana, but didn’t like the strong comedown, paranoia, or scattered feeling they would get from some strains. This led to an in depth study of landrace genetics and the “kids” they had produced through genetic crossing over the years.
Armed with a small laboratory space rented in Oakland, as well as the knowledge from their genetic research, they began a year long hunt for rare and exotic seeds from all over the world. This pheno hunting and constant experimentation produced cannabis that was close many times, but both partners insisted on experimenting until they perfected the strain to something that worked exactly as they wanted…every time.
By 2011, it was becoming doubtful that the project would be a success. Failure after failure had disheartened both men to the point that they were ready to quit. They decided that they would try one more round of completely new crosses of phenos and strains. Still, they did not achieve the results they wanted. However, one strain really stood out for its beauty, pungent smell, and beautiful crystal content. This strain was close, not quite there, but close. They decided to focus on this strain and began experimenting with crossing the strain with others in an attempt to get the perfect result.
They never found the perfect result they were looking for, but as they moved forward with the experiments, and as they allowed family and friends to try the product, they all loved ONE particular strain. They could not get enough of it and many described it as the perfect strain. In 2012, the strain was sold to an expert cultivator for $5,000 where it was named Blue Chip. Production of the strain in a boutique location began in 2013. From 2013, Purple Lotus acquired the exclusive rights to the Blue Chip strain and brand. From 2013-2018, people traveled from all over the world to try the famous Blue Chip, Tommy Chong picked the strain from a blind taste test contest, and over 30% of Purple Lotus customers purchased blue chip product.
Over the next few years, Purple Lotus invested over $1,000,000 into a cultivation facility located at their dispensary in San Jose. Purple Lotus hired geneticists to tirelessly work every day to reproduce the original Blue Chip strain and to produce the most exotic and rare strains available through aggressive experimentation.
After 2 years (and hundreds of strains to try), 3 strains stood head and shoulders above all the others. Purple Lotus reunited with the original producers of the blue chip strain for a smoke out and the vote was unanimous: these strains that had been produced were worthy of the Blue Chip name. To make sure, the flower was tested, packaged, and provided to 100 people to score between 1-10. The results were shocking, 91% of the people liked it, but more impressively 81 of these people loved it and rated it a ten.
ButterMintz, FortyOne, and Face On Fire were born, and our owner and staff haven’t smoked anything else since.