Cannabis Beer Startup Strikes Deal With Caribbean Resorts

It’s a marriage made in beverage heaven…Cannabis ‘beer’ and Antigua, one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful islands….

 Province Brands, the Toronto-based company  which is championing the production of beer brewed from cannabis, using a specific method that sees the grains traditionally used to make beer completely replaced with marijuana, has entered into a deal to bring its pot beverages to Ayre Resorts, a new collection of five-star properties opening its first resort in Antigua in 2021.

So pot, beer and Caribbean tropical beaches…who thinks this isn’t going to fly?

Province Brands’ announcement comes as lawmakers in both Canada and Antigua are preparing to fully legalese recreational cannabis use.

Currently you can smoke a joint anywhere in the country, but edible cannabis and the beverages that fall under that designation aren’t expected to become legal till sometime next year. But a law change on the tiny island of Antigua afforded the pot beer producer another option…

An amendment to Antigua’s Misuse of Drugs Act, which went into effect last March, states that a person who is “in possession of a maximum of 15 grams of the drug Cannabis or Cannabis resin is not guilty of an offence.”

Although the amendment stopped short of legalization, it does enough to allow Province Brands to be offered at Ayre Resorts.

“We got tired of waiting for Canada to legalize marijuana beverages,” Dooma Wendschuh, Co-Founder and CEO of Province Brands, said. “Honestly, developing our patent-pending process to brew a beer from cannabis has been so challenging that I never would have imagined we could possibly be ready to launch a commercial product before Canada allowed the sale of marijuana beverages.”

According to The Drinks Business, the company is currently building a 123,000 sq. ft. cannabis brewery in Grimsby, Ontario, which will enable it to “meet initial forecasted product demand in each province and territory.”

In the US, edibles sales, which includes beverages styled like wine and beer but crafted with THC, are projected to generate more than $4.1 billion by 2022, according to a report published by Arcview and BDS Analytics earlier this year.