Ha, yeah…pretty much.
So I make the “liquid diamonds” and yeah some of it is marketing mumbo jumbo. Sometimes I just decarb our isolate (we use a short path), but sometimes you have contaminants in 'em and we carry it over since it’s faster and easier to do it that way than dissolving and filtering and recovering solvent.
But is it “distillate”? Some of this is just a dose of my $.02 but “distillate” is both a descriptor and a specific thing. Yes, the term refers to distilled cannabinoids, but when you’re buying ‘distillate’ wholesale you expect a pretty specific thing. ~90-94% THC, yellow to amber, and usually a fairly distinctive odor (though hopefully fairly mild). It’s usually distilled from crude, usually Ethanol processed but not always, and doesn’t always have the best market rep.
Liquid diamonds, at least the way we make 'em, test anywhere from 97-99.5% THC (the remainder being whatever other cannabinoids came along for the ride. They’re always bang close to 100% cannabinoids by weight, and are water clear or close enough as to not make a difference. Even if it’s a distilled product, I don’t consider it, nor market it as, distillate. It’s not. They’re liquid diamonds.
“Hold on now” you say, but you just said it, you distill them! Sometimes, yes, but not always, but not everything that is distilled is distillate. If I take my HTE and distill out waterclear terps, are those distillate? They’re distilled! If I distill off my cleaning ethanol to recycle it, am I cleaning my system with distillate?
Anyway, just my opinion, but distillate is distillate, and liquid diamonds are something else. Higher grade, higher purity, less odor, and they can/should be differentiated from distillate…even if you distill 'em over.
They sure are a joy to distill though. Almost no volatiles/head fractions, no tail cut, hell I can run my flask down to damn near dry. Easy mode.