Medical marijuana dispensary review: The Cherry Co. in Cherry Creek

I hadn't heard of Cherry Co. until recently, when someone sent me a picture of their OG Kush x Super Silver Haze (called Kizzle) via Facebook.

Apparently the shop, which opened in June, hasn't done much advertising. They don't even have a website up yet.

I swung by early and was the only one in the shop aside from the budtender and the woman working behind the reception desk, who copied my paperwork before letting me in through the locked security door artistically painted to look like a heavy steel gate.

The Cherry Co.

Location: 111 S. Madison St., Ste. 111, Denver, 80209
Phone number: 303-399-6337 (MEDS)
Hours of operation: 10-7 every day.
Manager:Lianna Loving
Mission statement: "To provide the best meds at the best price."
Opened: June 2010
Raw marijuana price range: top shelf strains $45 for nonmembers, $40 for members. $30 and $40 nonmember strains available as well.
Other types of medicine: Hash, edibles.
Handicap-accessible: No.

The budtender, Cal, was finishing up his breakfast sandwich as he walked me back toward the bud bar. "We just have patient pricing instead of giving away free eighths and stuff like that," he said, taking a last bite and pointing up to a chalkboard on the wall behind him that had different strain names written in three colors of chalk. He explained how the prices are broken down by colored stickers on the jars, with red stickers representing the $50 strains, blue stickers the $40 ones and orange stickers the $35 -- even though there weren't any orange-labeled jars out.

I told him that I'm mostly in for nausea and pain but that I have no real preference either way as to what he shows me. The $40 strains came out first, with a decent Mango and a curious OG cut called Megatron. Both were done well from what I could tell, with potent, unique smells coming from both jars when opened. Unfortunately, what was left in the mostly empty jars -- and several others -- were small, shaky buds. Cal also pulled out a jar of Bruce Banner, which, like the earlier strains, was done very well but was mostly down to wispy bottom nugs. He mentioned that they had more of this strain, made famous by the guys at Delta 9, but he said he didn't have the safe combination to get more out. I appreciated the honesty, but could have gone without knowing I was just out of reach of one of my favorite chem varieties. Not all of the bud was shake, and the budtender did show me some good chunks of Super Silver Haze and the $50/eighth Buddha's Sister.

As he weighed out two strains for my split eighth into small, clear-plastic dipping-sauce containers, I spun around on the velvet-topped cast-iron antique stool and got a better look at the room. A stenciled pattern of repeating Moorish arches was painted on in sections against the red-wine-colored paint, fading in and out to give an aged look. Huge Persian rugs with deep reds and blues covered the floors and helped create two sitting areas, one with a really cool, Eastern-looking wooden bench with colorful plush pillows. Dried and pressed ganja leaves were mounted on the wall in small frames, with price tags dangling from each. The clinic is really just one giant room, with the bud bar on one side, the lounge in the middle, and a modest office area on your left as you enter from the faux-iron-finish security locked door.

Not using the space to create a big waiting room in the entryway worked out well for Cherry Company. Instead, the shop created a sort of poly-ethnic lounge that feels more like the inside of an elaborate gypsy hash-den tent (if gypsies rocked out to old-school Tom Petty and took credit cards for ganja transactions).

I hopped off the stool and walked along the counter to a wood-and-glass display case with about a dozen different types of hash, all made by their in-house "hash maker extraordinaire," as manager Lianna Loving put it. No doubt they had some good-looking hash, ranging from dark-chocolate colors to pill-bottle amber, but I was astounded at $60-per-gram prices on some of the strains. It was my only real issue with the shop -- especially considering their reasonable price range for ganja. I realize the effort that goes along with pulling bubble bags of specific strains, and I know that you only get so much from certain filter levels. Still, I'm not sure why that should command what to me seemed like prohibitively high prices. But Loving said people regularly come all the way from Aurora just for their hash, so maybe I'm alone on this one. To their credit, not many stores are going to the effort they are with their concentrates.

Overall, I think Cherry Co. is offering some good, soil-grown organic medicine at good prices, despite not having full jars the day I was in. And while I'm not one to hang out in dispensaries, Loving and her staff have created a comfortable place to relax for people who do.

Note: Owner Jason Irwin contacted me and said that, while they were carrying $60 BHO hash the week I was in, they price their bubble hash at $20-$50/gram.

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