EDIBLE: Altai Brands readies to rock the medicinal and adult marijuana market from the heart of Salinas.

Touring Altai Brands’ yet-unfinished corporate headquarters and production facility can feel like looking around Willy Wonka’s factory before the chocolate river ran deep and the Oompa-Loompas started singing.

But two weeks before Altai starts shipping upscale pot-infused lozenges, bonbons and candy bars to dispensaries statewide, to hit shelves July 1, it still brims with intrigue, promise and paradox.

The promise became apparent in March, when public records requests revealed Altai CEO and co-founder Rob Weakley, former partner at Pebble Beach Food & Wine parent Coastal Luxury Management, was looking to introduce a fancy food background to the cannabis industry. Usually, it works the other way, with pot pros learning to cook rather than chefs studying the science of infused foods. That makes this a big food story, and one of the biggest medicinal pot and local business stories too.

A partnership with pot law early adopter/local attorney Gavin Kogan, who enjoys deep knowledge of the market and contacts to match, helped them ID a big opportunity in gourmet sweets.

They can do it within Salinas code because sources send them THC-rich oils and resins that go into their recipes before they’re shipped to dispensaries. That means none of the legal exposure that come with growing or selling.

This tour revealed other sources of promise. One is intuitive food mind, serial entrepreneur and one-time Pebble Beach Company pastry chef Mark Ainsworth, with the processes and pedigree to make swanky chocolate happen on a scale to warrant Altai’s bold predictions of $15 million in revenue year one. Beyond fine dining duties at places like Ritz Carlton, he spent years building a business called Pastry Smart, an organic bread, pastry and chocolate producer whose facility grew to occupy a whopping 40,000 square feet. The last few months he’s been furiously developing formulas for things like peanut cream bars and chocolate-covered cinnamon red hots, and working with lab results to figure out how to manage consistency and potency.

“It’s a moving target,” he concedes.

The results are Willy Wonka-colorful, and a source of the intrigue. The dulce de leche bonbons enjoy yellow pinwheel patterns and flavor Ainsworth compares to a creamy tres leches cake. “The goal is no difference between artisan chocolate and ours,” he says, seeming to enjoy the adventure. “Yes, I was the first pastry chef to jump head first, cannonball, into this thing,” he says, smiling. “Rob told me it would be a fun ride. It has been.”

Weakley elaborates: “For restaurants there are a million manuals you can reference that remind you to put TP in the bathrooms. There is no path for this.”

A deal seeded through Kogan’s connections with one of Colorado’s most accomplished and upscale recreational and medicinal makers also brings promise. Dixie Elixirs & Edibles can reach a huge new California market starting July 1 – and one set to mushroom if legalization passes in 2016 – while delegating the production and distribution of their increasingly popular weed-infused sodas, potent Toasted Roosters and “dew drops” to a Altai, a so-called affiliated manufacturer.

Meanwhile Dixie provides insight, as owner and CEO Tripp Keber explains. “Over six years we’ve made lots of mistakes,” he says, “but we’ve documented those, and recipes, formulations, delivery systems too.” He adds he’s thrilled to spend more time in Monterey, and to work with a group focused as much on profit as safety and industry image.

“They’re committed to consumer education and manufacturing responsibly,” he says. “We found people we trusted implicitly could get it done.”

Altai machinery will soon bottle 80 bottles of Dixie elixirs a minute. Other machinery like candy wrapper crimpers and vast chocolate vats impress, but not as much as the packaging and the Altai products themselves, around a dozen items in all, each with two different potencies (10mg and 25mg) and sativa and indica strains, to calibrate more energizing/mind-stimulating and body relaxation effects, respectively. (Prices scale about $5/dose.) Given long-held pot stigmas, Weakley and Kogan stop at every chance to show off child-safety mechanisms and recite an affinity for regulation, and things like triple dose/quality testing at SC Laboratories (866-435-0709) in Santa Cruz.

“Viable, safe and sane,” Kogan says.

Which leads to part of the paradox: Altai doesn’t want to trumpet where their unmarked Salinas warehouse is located, even if they are eager to tour lawmakers there. The low-profile aims to avoid inspiring those ready to react to a historically demonized drug. The visits demonstrate the industry no longer belongs to what Weakley calls “dreads and tattoos.”

“We are trying to be the flagship of an industry,” he says. “We’re proud of what we do. We wanted to have a place to bring in politicians so they can see that.”

Kogan claims the reactions are becoming more predictable. “People are uniformly blown out of the water,” he says. “It’s just not what people expect with cannabis. We believe we can be best in class. And if we can do it, why not lead?”

In other words, these guys – chocolate river or not – believe they might just have a golden ticket.

QUICKBITES

• Zeph’s One-Stop pillar Bill Sites retires with a farewell, drinks and small bites 1-3pm Sunday, June 28 (RSVP to 757-3947 to attend). More on the blog, www.mcweekly.com/edible.

• Folktale LLC has purchased the Chateau Julien on Carmel Valley Road for $12 million, including the vineyard, winery, bottling plant, farmhouse, but not the CJ brand. More on the blog.

• Perfectly Pressed Juice just opened a drive through next to Mundos on Del Monte in Marina, 6am-6pm weekdays, 8am-2pm Saturday, 10am-2pm Sunday.

• In Seaside, Mi Pueblo has reopened as Santa Fe Foods (899-1932), a similar Mexican mercado with bakery, butcher, produce and a taqueria too.

• Peppoli just celebrated 15 years last week with style. Weekly contributor Shiho Fukushima elaborates on the blog.

• Happenings at McIntyre Vineyards: Friday music 4-7pm at the tasting studio, Tuesday/Thursday happy hour 3-6:30pm where the clock sets the price (3:35pm = $3.35/glass), winemaker dinner at Point Pinos Grill 6:30-9pm Thursday, June 18 ($75, 648-5774), and monthly Meet the Somm Seminars, next one 6-8pm Wednesday, June 24 ($20, 626-6268).

• il vecchio marks Father’s Day and the Summer Solstice with $5 pastas, entrées, desserts and steward’s choice of glass of wine 1-4pm Sunday, June 21 (324-4282 for reservations).

• Seaside Design District (Tile Studio, Truitt & White, Kitchen Studio, Cabinets & Such, Del Rey Fine Plumbing) breaks out wine, bites and board games 4-6pm June 18, Aug. 20 and Oct. 22. Visit all three, get a goodie bag.

• The Big Sur Food and Wine Festival needs online votes to nab a $100,000 grant Vote daily at www.missionmainstreetgrants.com/b/67721 until June 19.

• The California Travel Association’s annual awards happen Thursday, June 18, at Portola Hotel and include two local restaurant forces of nature: Ted Balestreri, co-founder of Sardine Factory, earned Travel Steward of the Year award and Justin Cogley, chef from Aubergine is the recipient of the Chef/Restaurateur/Food Artisan of the Year.

• Helen Keller: “Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”