Leo Stone, known for his “visionary heirloom genetics,” vividly remembers growing up in Japan, where the only weed he could get his hands on was Moroccan hashish. He basked in the intoxicating flavors sailors brought to shore, until he turned 21. Stone’s unique foray into a cannabis career spanning multiple continents began at an unlikely juncture: wartime in Iraq.
“I was one of the youngest analysts to be working with General Petraeus directly, who later on became, you know, Director of the CIA,” he said. “I found myself really into my job—I was really into hunting terrorists— I thought it was pretty cool to kind of be this, you know, lower level enlisted guy, but because I had the super passion for my job, and I was a workaholic, I got picked up by some cool units to do some interagency work.”
He was trained to gather the best intel, pulling from CIA exercises like lateral thinking to reach objectives efficiently. It was through this work that Stone met Staff Sergeant Grant and Major RS Rayfield, both “massive” influences on his life after the Army.
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“It [learning alongside them] kind of made that whole experience in Baghdad a lot more enjoyable, you know, like Baghdad was pretty fucked up,” he said. “We saw a lot of weird shit. A lot of people came back hurt, some people didn’t come back…Major Rayfield was just like a father or grandfather figure and mentor that was really helping me hone my craft when I was in the military.”
“Even though he was working at various agencies, he was making really good money and he always taught me there’s life after the military,” Stone remembers. “‘You’re good at this and you could have a career in this but think really hard about what you want to do with your entire life and what you want to devote your life to, because he had dreams that he wished he had chased when he was younger—And so those lessons always stayed with me”
When Stone got out of the army, he went through a discovery phase. “I chose to commit myself full-time to cannabis because we got back from Iraq and everyone drinks really hard, tries to self medicate, forget what happened in the desert,” he said. “So, you know, we turned to cannabis because it was definitely a lot healthier than drinking a bottle of vodka a day. And, you know, it allows you to think more introspectively about what you went through and it really is kind of like a medicine versus just being in a state of haze with alcohol and pharmaceutical pills.”
After testing positive for weed, he ultimately received an honorable discharge for his service in the intelligence community and set his sights on the famed Emerald Triangle: the Bordeaux of cannabis on the West coast. He “crossed the chasm” to dedicate his life to the craft and found himself as head of security for a dispensary owned by Mendicino Mike in San Diego.
“He’s the guy that hitchhiked out to California in 1978 and made it big in Mendo,” Stone said. “And when he opened that club…his partner was Eddy Lepp, who also partnered with Jack Herer.”
“For some reason. I was always super drawn to the seeds and the genetics part,” he said. “I thought it was cool that you could smoke something in Amsterdam, and if you really liked it, you could buy the seeds and you could literally put them in your pocket, fly back to the States and, you know, if you have the wherewithal you could grow it and have that favorite strain for yourself—I thought that was the coolest thing in the world as a young cannabis enthusiast.”
Mendicino Mike taught him everything about organic agriculture, genetics and the developing industry. In his third growing season, Stone went on to win his first Emerald Cup in 2012, at age 24. The prestigious honor “catapulted” his brand, Aficionado, to the stratosphere.
“It [Humboldt County, California] was one of the largest homogenous communities of career criminals, all dedicated towards one craft and so that was cool to me. When everyone left, Humboldt kind of lost its magic to me,” he said. “It’s always gonna have its magic. It’s a breathtaking place and so it’s a unique place with a lot of beautiful energy.”
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Although he earned his place as a recognized name in the genetics world, Stone acknowledges the duality of legalization. After Proposition 64 passed in 2016, California’s economy made a massive pivot away from the plant, creating devastating upheavals for entrepreneurs and local residents. “[There were] 15,000 farms in just Mendocino and Humboldt alone; I think now, we’d have to do a fact check on this but as far as I know, in the last year or two, less than 200 licenses have been have applied for renewal in Humboldt County.”
Stone says he “saw the writing on the walls.” While stationed in Germany, he sparked friendships across Europe, preparing for the inevitable cannabis curveball. Seven years ago, he opened an office in Barcelona with his best friend from France.
Skunk, French Connection and the Biggest Market in America
After witnessing the challenges of California, Aficionado was quick to pivot and expand globally. In 2017, Stone’s longtime partner, world-renowned hashishin Frenchy Cannoli, led him to the French Connection partnership.
It began one month before Spannabis, when Frenchy was teaching a hash workshop in Spain. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna meet you in Spain in a week, but when you do your class, ask them for the skunk and particularly if you could help me find some, I’m looking for the roadkill skunk.’”
“And so a week passes by until his class is done. I’m at the booth in Spain and these three French gangsters in black jackets come up to my booth like, ‘we’re looking for Leo.’ And I look at my crew, and they look mean; you couldn’t read their face, but it looked like something was gonna go down. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m Leo.’ And the guy reached into his jacket, and I told the team ‘Hey, shoot some s*** may go down.’”
“Instead of a weapon, it’s a f****** iPad. And he pulls out his f****** iPad and he’s like, ‘We represent Quintin, we hear you’re looking for the skunk.’ They turn their iPad on and they show me pictures of the skunk. I was like, ‘Where is Quintin?’ And he goes, ‘He’s actually waiting at this bar a few kilometers away. We have a car waiting outside for you. He wants to meet you.’”
“I get to the bar, I meet Quintin and he’s just the nicest fucking hippie kid you’ve ever met…He’s got like the festival bag. He’s so incredibly laid back and modest and then me and him, we didn’t even talk business once like our energies connected. And for the next two weeks, he just showed me the most beautiful parts of Barcelona and the Pyrenees Mountains, which border Spain and France.”
“So at the end of my trip, he gave me some of his background. He went to college for tissue culture; he actually learned the tissue culture method from the guy who invented the procedure for tissue culturing orchids. For a long time they couldn’t tissue culture orchids, because they found out that there was this symbiotic fungus that you needed to use, in order to get the epiphytes to root in the Agar. So he had that background and he also had a landscaping design company where was doing work for landscaping design on Vladimir Putin’s house in Monaco…Nothing is directly owned by him but he’s like, ‘Yeah, this is Vladimir Putin’s house.’ And you know, Quintin grew up in the French Riviera in Nice, which is by St. Tropez and not too far from Monaco. So he had, you know, all these really high profile, high dollar clients and at the end of our trip, he said, you know, I will hand my company over to my worker, I will close my grows down in Spain, if I can come to California to work with you and learn the Emerald Triangle way for a year. And he did it…back in the day when you made the jump to go into Mendocino like that it was either sink or swim. So I was really moved by his willingness to do that because I have done that too.”
“The pedigree of his skunk originally came from the Flying Dutchman. Flying Dutchman gave that skunk to Hy-Pro, Hy-Pro gave that skunk to Quinton. So there was like this traceable lineage towards the legitimacy of his skunk cut…He was producing skunk flower and that was kind of his schtick before he became known as the French Connection.”
“He maintained that and so in maintaining that the right people came to him like, ‘Hey, if you want some skunk seeds that predate you know, most of the skunks on the market, we have it and it ended up being the Angelvin family. It was buried on the island of Corsica and we actually had that sequenced by Medicinal Genomics. The data indicated that it was a unique cultivar and a unique genotype that hasn’t been that hasn’t been sequenced yet.”
Stone says Quintin helped “save the company” by bringing a new scientific perspective to the team. Soon they were building out state-of the-art GMP and GACP-Licensed facilities as consultants for enterprises across the space. “That’s how we landed the Columbia project. That’s how we landed our contract in Canada and that’s how we’re building out one of the first grows in France right now…That’s kind of the power of French Connection; someone believing in me, us believing in each other and never giving up on each other—[this] dude is my family now like my mom calls him her third son.”
The many collaborations Stone built throughout his tenure in cannabis are a testament to his ability to shape the genetic landscape with his story. Today their website reads: “Aficionado exemplifies the Emerald Triangle tradition of crafting boutique seeds that must be, at once, exceptionally bold and refined. Strictly produced in limited numbers and characterized by unparalleled quality—our exclusive varieties are reserved only for the most serious connoisseurs.” Showcasing the ingenuity of his future and the passion of his youth, Stone has over 16 years of hands-on experience and 46 awards to date. New developments for the company live in the Western New York region, where legal cannabis is beginning to blossom. “There’s a really special microclimate, we think; there’s a really special terroir in the general Lockport Buffalo area, honestly, it’s some of the best wine we’ve ever had. And I travel around the world and our farms are outside of Bordeaux in France.”
“Everyone thinks that New York is going to be the biggest market in the country, which it is positioned to be, you know, for the longest time they were the largest consumers of California cannabis…What drew me out here [Buffalo, NY] was the prospect of being able to have a nursery and work with local farmers here and develop the genetics further because I’m doing a lot of projects in France. If memory serves me right, Lockport, New York is somewhere around 40 to 43 degrees north and our farm in France is around 44 degrees north. We’re still 18 to 24 months out with construction because it’s a huge project. It’s a quarter million square feet…It’s not just [about] developing genetics for the New York market, it’s seeing what New York can develop as far as really high-grade genetics.”