WVA's Black Widow Pod

If you love classic cannabis strains, then the Black Widow Pax Era pod by Oregon’s Willamette Valley Alchemy (WVA) is here to make all of your dreams come true. It’s absolutely packed full of terpenes, and is quite possibly the Oregon brand’s most flavorful product on the market.

“When we first started extracting Black Widow, about two years ago, it was the first one we found that just dumped terps on us. We always get over 10% terpenes, all the way up to 22% terpenes on the Black Widow,” Colin Miller, WVA’s Sales and Distribution Manager, tells me during a recent Zoom.

Black Widow history and genetics

To know the Black Widow cannabis strain, you must first know the White Widow cannabis strain.

White Widow is an old school balanced hybrid that has been a household name for cannabis enthusiasts for over two decades now. It was bred in Amsterdam by the Green House Seed Company, aka Green House Seeds, way back in the early 1990s. Its genetics are a cross between a Brazilian landrace sativa with and a South Indian indica. White Widow has won multiple High Times Cannabis Cups.

Black Widow is a phenotype of the famous White Widow strain, meaning it has the same genetics, but expresses different physical characteristics. Like sisters. 

As the story goes, the original Green House Seeds was co-founded by Arjan Roskam and Scott Blakely, aka Shantibaba. At a certain point, the two fell out, Shanti left the company, and with him came his entire stock of plants, including the original White Widow. To set his White Widow apart from all of the other cuts on the market, Shantibaba renamed it to Black Widow. 

The rest is history.

How Black Widow Grows, Smells, and Tastes

Like White Widow, Miller tells me that Black Widow’s “got a bright green look to it with the orangish hairs, kind of like you’d see back in the day. It has that old school bud feel to it.”

Black Widow grows tall and stretchy. It produces a crystally, resin-heavy flower, with huge colas that contain an abundance of terpenes. On the smell and taste, Black Widow kicks out a mix of bright citrus and bright floral flavor. Its terpene profile most commonly features terpinolene dominance, followed by myrcene, limonene, and linalool. “Terpinolene is crazy high on it. Sometimes almost six to seven times as much as the others.”

Where can you buy WVA’s Black Widow PAX Era pod?

Like many of the old school strains, Black Widow can be pretty tough to find. Especially if you want some high quality flower, and double especially if you want it as some high quality oil. Luckily, Willamette Valley Alchemy produces both a Black Widow live resin PAX Era pod AND a Black Widow cured resin PAX Era pod. To produce their Black Widow PAX Era pods, WVA works with Trichome Farms, the only known grower in the state of Oregon with the true old school cut of Shantibaba’s Black Widow.

“All of our PAX Era pods are either going to be liquid live resin or liquid cured resin. It is a live resin, but instead of promoting diamond growth, we prohibit those THCA crystals from growing, so it always stays in the nice liquidy consistency.” Miller says of Willamette Valley Alchemy’s PAX Era pods.

How to Optimize WVA’s Black Widow PAX Era Pod

For vape enthusiasts, PAX Era is a premium battery that delivers a premium experience. Miller declares “[ PAX Era] is next level, You can change the temperature on your phone, they have an app, it hits with super clean hits. Our oil needs to be in something this high tech and customizable for the consumer.” 

To optimize the Black Widow PAX Era pod, Colin tells me the temperature should be “Low and slow, baby. All day, every day. You should be hitting for the terps, for the flavor.” 

The Black Widow Willamette Valley Alchemy PAX Era pod has a preset temperature of 550 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep your PAX Era device around this temperature, and you’re sure to get the closest experience to consuming Black Widow flower that a vaporizer can provide.