Sherbinskis is Mario Guzman's cannabis brand and the self-styled home of the original Gelato. Guzman, known as Mr. Sherbinski, started with a 30-square-foot garden in his San Francisco garage, bred Sunset Sherbet, then used it to make Gelato with the Cookies crew in 2014. Today the brand sells flower in orange glass jars, live rosin joints and live resin vapes, mostly in California.
From Sacramento to a Sunset District garage
Guzman grew up in Sacramento and played football at Roseville High School, where Teddy Bruschi was a teammate. At 20 he got his real estate license and followed his heart to the Bay Area, where he fell in with the city's cannabis scene.
He eventually cashed out his 401(k), studied the grow books of Jorge Cervantes and Ed Rosenthal, and built a grow room in a garage on 20th Avenue in the Sunset District. That 30-square-foot garden is where the Sherbinskis story starts.
The accidental Sunset Sherbet
Sunset Sherbet dates to 2012, when a male Pink Panties plant pollinated a room of Girl Scout Cookies. When Guzman smoked the result he tasted berry, citrus, lemon, orange and a little lime, and named it after the Thrifty sherbet he ate as a kid. Sherbinskis still spells it Sunset Sherbert.
He moved small batches through influential California dispensaries, and Bay Area demand did the rest. The weed found favor in the Bay Area hip-hop scene, rappers name-checked it, and WeedWeek later called Sherbinskis one of the rarest things in cannabis: an underground crossover success.
Gelato and the 2014 pheno hunt
Gelato came out of an ongoing collaboration with the Cookies crew, who were after creamier, fruitier options than the mint-and-fuel GSC cuts of the day. Guzman and Jai “Jigga” Chang, the original GSC breeder, used colloidal silver to reverse a Sunset Sherbet female into pollen and crossed it with Thin Mint Cookies. At an invite-only tasting on June 16, 2014, the keepers were numbered by the pots they grew in: 25, 33, 41, 43, 45 and 49.
Number 33 became Larry Bird, and Gelato #33 is the cut that spread furthest once Guzman let it circulate; Highsnobiety went on to call Gelato the world's most sought-after cannabis strain. Number 41 became Bacio and number 49 became Acai, now sold as Acai Berry Gelato alongside Mochi Gelato and Gello Gelato. The house tasting notes stay short: gas and floral for Bacio, dough for Mochi, berry for Acai, fruit for Gello.
Hip-hop, Nike and the Fairfax Avenue flagship
By 2019 The New York Times had profiled Guzman, and High Times counted Sherbinskis strains in more than 200 hip-hop tracks, plus collaborations with Nike and the Barneys New York flagship in Beverly Hills. That year Guzman was also managing cultivation that stretched from Mendocino to Santa Barbara.
In November 2019 Sherbinskis opened a 2,500-square-foot flagship on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles with delivery service emjay, with a mural-style bud wall, floor-to-ceiling windows and the brand's orange-and-white shelving. Alongside house flower it stocked outside brands such as dosist, Double Barrel and Select, and hosted monthly artist collaborations. Forbes put Guzman, as founder and CEO, on its 2022 Cannabis 42.0 list. The Fairfax store has since closed, and the state retail license behind it was surrendered.
What Sherbinskis sells now
The current catalog is built around four formats:
- Indoor flower in the signature orange glass jars
- Live rosin joints with ceramic tips
- Live resin 510 cartridges on ceramic cores
- Quattro dual-chamber vapes
Product sells through a Weedmaps storefront, and hoodies, tees and headwear sit on Sherbshop. Vapes carry the business: two-thirds of August 2026 sales, per Headset, across 135 dispensaries, all but one in California. True Gelato 33 live resin carts and disposables were the top sellers, followed by Orange Sherbs live resin carts.
Canada, seeds and Voice of the Plant
Canada came through Final Bell, which signed on in 2022 to handle manufacturing, compliance and market entry; at that point Sherbinskis was sold only in California and Michigan. The Orange Sherbs live resin all-in-one sold out on release in Ontario, and Headset still ranks the brand's vapes there. Guzman also put the genetics into seed that year with Silent Seeds, releasing Polar Gelato, Pink Sunset and Acai Jelly as feminized seeds, plus autoflower versions of Polar Gelato and Pink Sunset.
Guzman and Victorine Deych-Guzman also founded Voice of the Plant, a collective built on art, genetics, food and music. In 2025 it dropped a vinyl record with Smoke DZA, Divine RBG and the 10/10 Boys at Mary Jane Berlin, and Voice of the Plant flower built on Sherbinski genetics, including a Runtz x Sunset Sherbet cross, has reached New York dispensary menus.
For adults 21 and over.