Latest / No Dirt No Flowers Podcast / Varietal Origin Series / CTZ / Ft. Leslie Roy

Transcript

Varietal Origin Series / CTZ / Ft. Leslie Roy · No Dirt No Flowers Podcast

0:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our very
0:02
first episode devoted to varietal origins. Okay,
0:06
if you've ever wondered what the C, T, and Z
0:09
stood for in CTZ, then this is the podcast for
0:12
you, and it has it all. Les Roy, lawsuits, squirrel
0:15
moments, clones, sisters, cloned sisters, powdery
0:20
mildew, international hot markets, car trunk
0:23
roots. What are car trunk roots? Well, you have
0:26
to listen and find out. Enjoy. Here we are. Les
0:37
Roy's back. Round two. We had our first, I don't
0:42
know if it was first, but it was, I'm going to
0:45
call it our first official brewer suggestion
0:48
for a topic slash series. And that was Varietal
0:56
Origins. And it was suggested that we start with
1:03
CTZ and see where we go from there. Love it.
1:08
With probably our most popular guest. Yeah. I
1:13
don't know. I don't know how we measure this,
1:14
but Blake. Verbal feedback has been strong. I
1:19
mean, I don't want to call Blake out without
1:21
him being here, but. Blake's dad, Kevin, told
1:25
us how amazing it is. Mr. Roy was. Actually,
1:32
Blake, I think, himself told us that. Oh, yeah.
1:34
I think they were both amazing. I'm not the one
1:37
who said that you're my favorite person that's
1:40
been on here. That comes from other people. So.
1:45
Look at his face. He doesn't notice. He's speechless.
1:48
I'm just quietly sitting here waiting. Well,
1:51
I mean, yeah. I'm drinking my coffee from my
1:54
new coffee cup. Oh, yeah, we got coffee cups
1:56
now. We are official. It says N -D -N -F. Yep.
2:01
No dirt, no flowers. I appreciate that. Do I
2:04
get another cup for my second? No. Oh. No. Yeah,
2:08
you can have a second cup. Oh, all right. You
2:10
can have mine. Co -captain says he gets a second
2:13
cup. All right. Here we go. All right. So, yeah,
2:18
varietal origins, CTZ. Wow. I don't know where
2:23
to start with that one. The history of that is
2:26
something that I could go on for days about.
2:30
I know. And your statement to me the other day
2:31
when I told you that we wanted to bring you on
2:33
to talk about CTZ, you're like, well, how are
2:35
we going to talk about CTZ for an hour and a
2:37
half? I was like, oh, that reminds me of the
2:41
comment that I made when I came back to the farm.
2:43
There's nothing else to do here. It's all been
2:45
done. It leads me to believe I left an incomplete
2:51
project. Well, I mean, I just think that. It
2:56
seems like all these varieties have something
2:58
interesting about them, whether they were just
3:00
found in the wild or they have a bunch of, you
3:04
know, cloak and dagger things and litigation
3:08
surrounding them, like CTZ. Let's talk about
3:13
this before we get started. What is, from what
3:18
point? of expertise do you come on this? Oh,
3:23
we got to qualify first? Well, we were involved
3:28
in a lawsuit over CTC. That sounds like a pretty
3:32
good place to start. Yeah, we had a clone of
3:36
CTC. CTC stands for, as you well know, Columbus,
3:41
Tomahawk, Zeus. But there was a fourth variety.
3:45
Well, actually a fourth and fifth. I'll start
3:48
with the fourth variety first, which is Rivers.
3:50
We had a clone. Not a clone. A sister. A sister.
3:55
Well, we believe it was a sister, right? Of CTZ.
3:59
And we called it Rivers. And, of course, the
4:02
fifth one was the F1000 from Lupo Fresh, which
4:06
the roots were, which magically appeared at the
4:11
Lupo Fresh farm. Well, I think it came out later
4:14
in discovery in a lawsuit that it wasn't just
4:18
magic. No. It was interesting. A young fellow
4:22
that kind of spilled the beans, Danny Hallman,
4:25
was actually the son of Don Hallman, who worked
4:29
for our farm for 30 years, grew up together like
4:31
brothers. He lived about a quarter of a mile
4:34
from where I was born and raised. And he was
4:37
our foreman for— Like a quarter mile from right
4:39
there? Yeah, just right over there by the side
4:41
of the CA. the big red house and he actually
4:45
his mom and dad lived right across the road at
4:47
the end of the road there's a house to the to
4:50
the northwest his parents grew up there and he
4:53
grew up there so he grew up in near us the whole
4:57
time his father was part of the hop co -op in
5:00
moxie and he was had a truck and that's when
5:03
hughes started the co -op in moxie which is a
5:07
picking machine That's a whole other story. Yeah,
5:10
I feel like this topic is going to be... Squirrel
5:16
moments? There's going to be the potential for
5:18
a lot of squirrel moments, and I'm going to try
5:20
to keep us on topic. But I also don't want to
5:23
take away from the DNA of us. Yeah. Well, the
5:29
other thing, too, as we go through this history
5:32
of CTZ, we cannot properly understand history
5:35
without some historical context. What you may
5:38
call squirrel moments, I call it contact. Listen.
5:42
Good point. The rules are loose here. You got
5:46
a big field to play on. There are fences on the
5:51
outside of it. Yeah. I just haven't. There are
5:53
electric fences too, as I understand. Oh, your
5:56
son's got more of a bite than I do. Yeah. Well,
5:59
you had threatened me with a shock collar previously.
6:03
It wasn't so much a threat as a... A solution.
6:07
A functional device for the situation. At least
6:12
with a fence, I know when I'm approaching it
6:13
with a shock collar, I have no idea when I've
6:15
reached the perimeter. We can set some warning
6:17
beeps. Yeah, we can set some warning beeps. Oh,
6:20
okay. I will be cognizant of the beep. We tried
6:26
to put the pug on one of those, but their necks
6:29
are so fat and fatter than their face that the
6:32
shock collar just fell off of it. That's awesome.
6:38
I just have this, just the neck and the face
6:42
just all one width. Well, it's kind of like it
6:46
narrows as you get more towards their flat little
6:49
faces. Starts at their shoulders and just like
6:53
bundles straight down. Okay. So beep, beep. Yeah,
6:58
beep, beep. Yeah, so CTZ. Okay. I don't know.
7:04
I mean, start... Historical context. Historical
7:06
context. Well, first of all, a couple things.
7:08
Thanks for having me here today. I would also...
7:11
I'd like to thank Steve Carpenter, who wrote
7:14
the book In Pursuit of Hoppiness, The History
7:16
of Yakima Chief. He kindly allowed me to use
7:19
some of his references from his book that talks
7:23
a lot about the CTZ history. And there's a few
7:26
things I could probably fill in that were not
7:29
in the book, either because only we knew about
7:32
them or... I think this whole CTZ revolves around
7:44
a period of the hop industry that was very tumultuous.
7:47
Lawsuits, collapse of various merchants, start
7:51
of new merchants, lawsuits, antitrust, the collapse
7:56
of the hop marketing order. Accusations of antitrust,
8:00
yeah. or actual findings of anti -trust just
8:03
that's that's well yeah there was two lawsuits
8:07
you know not any trust there was one from the
8:09
growers to the merchants yep and then the brewers
8:13
to the merchants and uh so that was done in the
8:17
80s that was also when the hot marketing order
8:20
uh was terminated in 1986. yeah so there was
8:24
a lot going on during that period But we start
8:29
back with Chuck Zimmerman, who really was in
8:33
the center of this controversy. And Chuck's history
8:38
goes back to his work at Prosser Research Station.
8:43
So he was a USDA scientist, mostly in agronomy
8:49
and physiology. He worked with Oregon State,
8:53
which was a USDA research station also. But they
8:57
had the charter for hop breeding, whereas Prosser
9:01
did not. And probably more importantly, the funding,
9:04
right, along with that charter. Yeah, the funding,
9:06
yeah. That was a funding deal. But they also
9:09
funded Prosser. So a lot of the breeding was
9:12
done in Oregon, and Prosser was the backup place
9:18
for all the germplasm. So they had two spots.
9:21
So that was Chuck's. responsibility was to trial
9:24
new varieties as well as to maintain the USDA
9:28
germplasm backup. So that starts somewhere in
9:32
the, you know, back in the 70s and stuff like
9:34
that. Chuck actually left the USDA in 1979, which
9:40
starts this whole series on the CTZ. My father,
9:44
as well as myself, were good friends with both
9:47
Al Hunnell in Corvallis as well as Chuck Zimmerman
9:51
here. We started off with doing some work with
9:55
him on seedless hops. While triploid, I'm not
10:01
going to get into all the nuances here, but triploid
10:03
hops, which are sterile, willamette being one
10:06
of the most common, so they don't produce seeds
10:08
for the most part. But Chuck had another idea,
10:13
and that was using triploid males. So we were
10:15
quietly doing work with him on triploid males.
10:21
When I say quietly, it was because during that
10:25
period, the goal was to get to seedless hops.
10:28
And the idea of putting males into a field, even
10:33
though they were triploid males and sterile,
10:35
to get the benefits of seed, not necessarily
10:40
the weight. The seeds would be aborted seeds,
10:42
but you would get earlier maturity, you would
10:45
get larger hops, more hops, and things like that,
10:49
and weight. And so we did that research with
10:52
a variety called Tausman. He's along with us
10:56
way back in history. And we did about five, six
10:59
years of work with them. But then in the end,
11:03
they became complicated because the benefits
11:05
did not outweigh the cost and the hassle of triploid
11:14
males. Because part of the problem was you have
11:17
different maturities of males, ripe to flower,
11:21
not in a universal one. The cone does not come
11:24
universally receptable to pollen. If you look
11:29
at it, you can tell if you have an early male,
11:31
late male pollination by where the seeds are
11:34
in the hop. So the little burr comes out and
11:37
each one becomes receptive for pollination at
11:41
different times. So we worked out with different
11:44
males, different timing of males, early males,
11:46
late males, mid. maturity males, and it was just
11:51
too much work. So we just kind of abandoned it
11:53
after a while. What was too much work? The work
11:56
itself or translating it into commercial production?
12:00
The benefits that were perceived to be with seeded
12:04
hops did not translate over to the cost and management
12:09
of the triploid males. Because there was always
12:11
some pollination. I think it was about 5 % of
12:16
the seeds would be viable. And so neighbors,
12:19
you know, you get that many. You're doing six,
12:21
seven males to the acre. Which is actually a
12:24
lot. Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, we used to rogue
12:27
males out of our field. That was part of our
12:30
responsibilities as kids. We still rogue males,
12:34
by the way. Thank you. So the idea was you could
12:38
walk into close to harvest and you see where
12:41
the seeded hops are and then you start making
12:43
your circle and you can actually circle down
12:45
until you find a male. But that's transgression.
12:48
Back to CTZ. So when Chuck left USDA in 1979,
12:54
when in 1978 the USDA came in and said that Chuck
12:59
was not able to do any breeding and process.
13:03
His goal was physiology and geronomy and maintaining
13:07
the germplasm backup. And so the only place that
13:11
was authorized to fund. was Oregon, which was
13:15
always one of the contentions between Washington
13:17
and Oregon. You know, there was a time when we
13:20
all didn't get along so well. But, you know,
13:23
that's changed. So when Chuck left, he already
13:26
had a little nursery at home, and he was, you
13:29
know, doing some crosses there. He was doing
13:32
crosses there because he wasn't allowed as part
13:36
of his job to do it at Prosser. So because it
13:39
was a passion of his, he was doing it at home.
13:40
It was a passion of his, yes. After 79, when
13:44
he left, I'm going to go to my notes here. He
13:48
started off, he was very good friends with John
13:51
Segal. Segal had Humanless Hops, which was owned
13:54
by John Segal and a guy named Johannes Reiser,
13:59
which ultimately led to Hop Union. So John Segal
14:03
and Johannes Reiser were partners. Chuck, when
14:08
he left USDA, he went to work. for humanists
14:12
and his goal was to help establish a breeding
14:16
program which was relatively new if you look
14:19
at hop breeding well in the history of hops it's
14:23
relatively new i mean most hops were just they
14:25
found hops in the field they wasn't in any organized
14:27
breeding until probably the early 1900s and then
14:31
it goes into these salmon were there any private
14:35
breeding programs at that time or was that kind
14:38
of was Chuck going to work for, was it Humulus?
14:41
Was that kind of like the start of private breeding,
14:44
it sounds like? I would think so, yeah. That
14:47
would probably be some of the very earliest,
14:49
probably the first private breeding program I
14:52
knew in the United States. Besides just finding
14:55
them in the field, which still seems like that's
14:58
still a valid way of establishing a variety,
15:01
which we'll probably get into in future episodes.
15:05
Mm -hmm. No, I would say, though, that wasn't
15:08
there, which I think we will mention the Variety
15:13
Symphony within this CTZ context, right? Because
15:17
I guess maybe I can save my thoughts on that.
15:22
Well, that was actually part of the turmoil of
15:25
the night, I would call from 1980 up to 2010,
15:29
because that powdery mildew came in in 1997.
15:36
It was Symphony from Haas, and it was horrible.
15:38
I mean, we actually cut down fields before harvest.
15:42
I mean, the powdery mildew was so bad, it was
15:45
completely white. I remember walking fields and
15:48
just, I mean, it was insane. But actually, wasn't
15:54
that just kind of the first year or the first
15:56
couple years until we figured out how to deal
15:58
with it? So what that was was Symphony was so
16:02
bad, and there was threats of lawsuits, which
16:04
is a whole other, you go into that whole scenario.
16:08
Before they got really into the full -blown lawsuits,
16:12
Haas decided to remove all Symphonies. We had
16:15
planted, I don't know, 100 and some acres of
16:18
Symphony. And so we had to take them out. And
16:21
as the agreement stated, we had to take Symphony
16:26
out, and Haas was working with... Hop Union to
16:30
get access to Columbus to replace Symphony with
16:35
that variety. So we've talked a little bit about
16:38
Chuck and Chuck's background. So Chuck is now,
16:42
just to kind of rewind, and I'll fill in the
16:45
blanks here. So Chuck went to work for Humulus
16:48
after he left USDA. And that was owned by John
16:51
Siegel and Johannes Reiser. Shortly after Chuck
16:54
went to work for there, he... Johannes Reiser
16:58
bought Siegel's position out of Humulus. And
17:04
then Chuck became a part of that, and that became
17:06
Hoppe Union USA, the early start of it. And Chuck
17:09
was part of that. The timing gets kind of crazy
17:13
here, but then Chuck had rights to the warehouse
17:17
that they were using. The warehouse that Hoppe
17:19
Union was using? Well, that Humulus was using.
17:22
The very first warehouse down in St. Patrick's.
17:24
That became Hoppe Union USA. Yeah. and that ultimately
17:27
led to the warehouse going to sunrise market
17:30
or yakima valley hop storage which was a precursor
17:33
to ych ycr whoever so where did uh columbus tomahawk
17:41
zeus river where's the cross made the f the f1000
17:47
and then and then kind of like parking lot symphony
17:50
for right now but out of like that Total varietal
17:54
pool, where were the crosses made and when and
17:56
how did they get released? And who are the owners
17:59
of those varieties? That's where it gets kind
18:02
of controversial. You'll see lots of articles
18:05
and blog postings and opinion pieces about the
18:12
origin of CTZ. One fact for sure was that Chuck
18:17
never said how the... cross was made or what
18:22
the parents were. That was the only standard
18:25
thing that was consistent to all the opinions
18:29
and potential lawsuits. Chuck never announced
18:32
how he did it. When he left USDA in 1979, he
18:39
left Prosser, there was no one to maintain the
18:43
germplasm, so there's no doubt Chuck took some
18:46
of the... rootstock from processor and brought
18:50
to his home. Now, were they publicly available
18:54
plants or were they still unreleased USDA germplasm?
19:00
That's open for discussion. There's some opinions
19:03
that said that Chuck used unreleased material,
19:08
males and or females, to make the cross. There
19:13
was also research that shows that Chuck did the
19:17
cross in 1980 with the approval of usda corvallis
19:23
they deny that so there's a whole controversy
19:27
around where some of the pollen and or rootstock
19:30
came from so the original crosses of columbus
19:34
tomahawk zeus f -1000 and river were i would
19:40
say 1980. where they're around 1980 or in 1980
19:44
and no one really knows where that germplasm
19:47
came from but but did they all came out of chuck's
19:50
backyard we don't know we don't know for that
19:54
for for sure but i would say yes i we being friends
19:58
with chuck we did visit that nursery back in
20:01
those days in the 80s so it did exist there's
20:04
no doubt what's said is that selection 26 became
20:11
Columbus, it came that. So as Chuck went through
20:15
his tenure, he went from USDA to Humulus to help
20:21
you in USA. Then he went to Morris Hanbury. Then
20:24
he worked with the Acoma chief. And as part of
20:27
these severance packages or changing of jobs,
20:30
in most of the cases, there was a lot of things.
20:33
He was able to carry any material that he originated,
20:36
what he brought into the job. and took it took
20:41
him with him there was also things where he had
20:44
first right refusal on the warehouse down in
20:47
sunny side which was it ultimately transferred
20:49
to yakima chief sunrise in my view and that's
20:53
just looking from the outside and with some knowledge
20:56
was that when chuck moved he left either some
21:01
material there that he was also took with him
21:04
so in other words anything he brought in he was
21:07
able to take with him but he probably left the
21:10
material there also so in other words during
21:13
the hop union that became columbus then ultimately
21:18
he was working with he got some cuttings mike
21:22
smith and steve carpenter i mean excuse me and
21:25
the carpenters and peralts got some cuttings
21:27
from chuck and this was they were propagated
21:32
in by mike smith in the greenhouse his greenhouse
21:35
on his farm in moxie that ultimately became...
21:39
The little glass greenhouse? Well, not the one.
21:41
I asked Mike yesterday. I had lunch with him.
21:43
And he said, no, it wasn't that one. He had a
21:46
little teeny greenhouse. He did do cuttings in
21:48
there, but he said the CTZ was not one of them
21:51
because it was his grandmother's greenhouse.
21:53
And he did some cuttings in there way back in
21:55
the day. And remember, we were both doing propagation
21:58
work because Mike and I were the ones instrumental
22:01
in bringing Eroica and Galena from Idaho to Moxie.
22:07
We remember going down there and taking cuttings
22:09
and had a refrigerator and a generator in the
22:11
back of the pickup. A refrigerator and a generator.
22:15
That's awesome. That's an origin of a variety
22:18
of stuff. Anyway, that was Bob Romanco, who was
22:22
in Idaho, and he was working for USDA there,
22:26
and he did great crosses, and actually his name
22:31
was on many of the things. Anyway, back to the
22:34
story. So now you have the pathway of Columbus
22:39
moving forward through Hoppe Union. And by then,
22:42
Chuck had left Hoppe Union and he went to another
22:46
place while he was working with Sunrise in the
22:50
early parts of YCR, YCH. So they had a path there
22:55
for Tomahawk. And then Hoppe Union was moving
22:59
forward with Columbus. So now we're going into
23:03
the 70s, the late 70s, even into the 80s, 90s
23:08
now because it doesn't really come forward until
23:11
97, 98. What doesn't come forward? The whole
23:14
CTC because Tomahawk by the YCR group was being
23:18
used in their new alpha program with Pfizer,
23:21
which was bought by Coulter and then Haas bought.
23:26
while Yakima Chief was in the process of buying
23:28
it. So that's a little story there. So it sounds
23:31
like we have one branching here so far. Yeah,
23:33
we know one branch for sure. Of the CTZ plus
23:37
genetic pool where we have a branching off of
23:42
what sounds like started as Columbus into Tomahawk,
23:45
right? Columbus came out first or Tomahawk? I
23:51
would say that Tomahawk was the first one really.
23:55
put into production. It existed in Hop Union.
23:59
And after Chuck left Hop Union, a fellow named
24:02
Greg Lewis came in from the UK. He was a plant
24:05
breeder. And that was in the 80s. And he actually
24:09
had some of his background at White College.
24:13
And actually, this is a little sidebar. This
24:15
is a little squirrel, but let me go off on this
24:16
one. Go ahead. Run. Run. So what happened, Greg
24:20
Lewis brought in low trellis. And actually built
24:25
a machine, Big Blue, we called it. We had Big
24:29
Blue on the ranch. Yeah, that's right. It still
24:31
exists. I know. Where is it? It's down at Morford's.
24:35
Morford's has it. Actually, I confirmed this
24:37
with Gary. Actually, the earliest low trellis
24:41
was Morford's. Probably back in the 70s, they
24:44
planted clusters. There was the promise and the
24:48
hope of creating a low trellis picker. And Uncle
24:52
Wes. gary's father he planted some clusters which
24:56
was a cluster a little trellis was not not a
24:59
good idea not a good idea but you know yeah gotta
25:02
gotta find these things oh yeah the picker never
25:05
materialized so morpher's had to hand cut all
25:09
the vines these little short vines and bring
25:11
them into the machine to be harvested that went
25:13
away then so then uh when greg lewis came in
25:18
he felt it and Galenas would work on it. They
25:23
had, I don't know, maybe 100 acres of that. They
25:25
were one of the really first. Who's they who?
25:27
Huff Union. Yeah. Under the leadership of Greg
25:30
Lewis. And then that led to UK, Peter Darby coming
25:38
over, seeing it, going back and starting the
25:41
low trellis breeding programs. Slash movement.
25:44
Yeah. Slash UK movement. Yeah. Of sorts. Yeah,
25:48
you could talk in the local, because it went
25:50
worldwide. Full circle. Yeah. And then, I don't
25:55
know, had a place with us for a while and then
25:57
fizzled out. It's probably a whole story in itself.
26:00
Yeah, it's a whole thing. I don't want to get
26:01
into that one. So anyway, back to the story.
26:04
So now we have two branches. We have the Columbus
26:06
branch and we have the Tomahawk branch. And in
26:08
1980s, the U .S. government allowed plant patents
26:14
to come into being. So it was you could patent
26:17
genetics very first. Greg Lewis saw that opportunity.
26:24
So I believe in 1992, he applied for a plant
26:30
patent while YCR was, or it wasn't YCR then,
26:35
whatever the name was, also applied for a patent
26:39
for tomahawk. So there was a Columbus. Patent
26:44
-filing A &A Tomahawk. That's what led to the
26:46
lawsuits, ultimately. So, plants. In the early
26:50
90s, when the plant passed. But they were being
26:57
grown prior to that and marketed. You know, the
27:01
CTZ was being used with the Pfizer group, and
27:04
that was all in the 80s. But we haven't talked
27:06
about the Z yet. We've talked about Columbus
27:09
and Tomahawk. Tomahawk was going to the Pfizer
27:10
program. Yeah. Columbus really wasn't much of
27:15
a thing. No, it was. I don't know where it was
27:19
in marketing. It was in the market somewhere,
27:21
but it wasn't being talked about or branded or
27:25
anything like that much, right? Yeah. So anyway,
27:29
so then the Zeus, there's been genetics done
27:32
on it, and it's similar to Columbus and Tomahawk.
27:37
And so it probably came from Chuck. I just don't
27:41
know. No one's ever said. the path of zeus um
27:46
it is considered to be probably a little bit
27:48
different but genetically it's it's probably
27:51
they're probably sisters i don't know anything
27:53
about the genetic makeup of it but i will say
27:57
having grown all of those specifically watch
28:00
the difference between rivers zeus and tomahawk
28:03
they are similar but they have there's noticeable
28:07
differences in their growing habits So from a
28:11
grower perspective, if you put all three of those
28:13
varieties in front of me and ask me to grow them,
28:15
I can tell you that they're unique. I believe
28:22
they are genetically the exact same. I would
28:26
guess the difference has something to do with
28:28
epigenetics or virus load. Sisters in genetics
28:34
would have very similar. So there has been some...
28:40
I guess there's rumors that there's been some
28:42
genetic testing done and they're all completely
28:44
identical. Yeah, I mean, absolutely 100 % identical.
28:49
See, that's something new. I have not heard that
28:52
because there's references during the lawsuit
28:55
that Zeus was genetically similar to Columbus
29:01
and or Tomahawk, but there was differences. That
29:04
was... published during the lawsuit so but genetics
29:07
have moved a long way yeah that's what i say
29:09
is like maybe genetic testing wasn't yeah as
29:12
far along as it is now yeah which is interesting
29:15
you said epigenetics or virus load could contribute
29:18
to the i mean i can see that's very viable too
29:21
i just remember that there were noticeable differences
29:24
between them but did it i don't think anyone's
29:27
done a side -by -side comparison of river which
29:30
we'll get to versus those three right But while
29:32
we're talking about the pathways. Which would
29:34
be interesting to do just out of curiosity. So
29:37
I mentioned River. Because we still have River.
29:40
Yeah, we still have River. And so River, and
29:44
this came out in the lawsuit, because we were
29:45
one of the companies sued later on over patent
29:49
infringement. That's a whole other story. So
29:53
Rivers. I want to hear that, though. Yeah. About
29:56
the lawsuits? And the people want to know about
29:58
Rivers. So generally speaking, just to kind of
30:03
try to put a pin in this timeline. So we have
30:05
Columbus debatably branched out into Tomahawk.
30:11
Zeus is sitting over there with a question mark
30:13
around it. Where did it come from? And then where
30:16
in this whole timeline did Chuck call Grandpa
30:20
and you go secure roots? And who sued you? Let
30:29
me first, I'll give you the path how we acquired
30:31
them. So this is probably in the late 80s or
30:34
something. Chuck called my father, said, you
30:37
know, I'm retiring. He was getting out of everything.
30:40
And he says, I have some roots in my nursery
30:42
at home that I would like to give you. Where
30:45
was Chuck at in the industry when he made that
30:48
call? I would think he was probably close to
30:50
retiring. Who was he working for or with? He
30:53
would have been, the last one would have been.
30:56
Some place there he decided he wanted to get
30:58
out. So he had the first right of refusal on
31:02
the warehouses. So Sunny Hops or Sunrise Market
31:07
or whatever it was at the time said, won't you
31:10
buy the warehouse and you buy them for us with
31:13
your first right of refusal, which he did. And
31:16
that became the first warehouse of Yakima Valley
31:20
Hop Storage, which was a precursor to YCH, YCR,
31:24
and all that. But then shortly after that, Chuck,
31:28
you know, funny, he was president of Op Union
31:31
for a period of time. Then he left that. So he
31:34
had a very quick movement between companies,
31:38
and then he decided just to stop. You know, he
31:40
died in 2009 of Parkinson's. God rest his soul.
31:44
Great guy. But so I could go back and probably
31:48
find out when I couldn't really get that far
31:50
back into our history, but it was probably in
31:53
the 90s somewhere. Late 90s. So he calls up.
31:57
He says, I'm getting out of this whole business,
31:59
and I have some hops or roots in my nursery I'd
32:05
like to give you. It was in January. Went down
32:08
to the barn, the famous place, gathering spot
32:12
in Prosser. I mean, if you wanted to know anything
32:15
about hops, you went to the barn, had a couple
32:17
beers. Within an hour or two, you had all the
32:20
gossip you had. That's where Pete Szymanski,
32:22
these are names people probably don't even remember.
32:26
Anyway, so I drove down to Prosser. I remember
32:30
it was 10 below zero. And I drove down there,
32:33
met Chuck, and he opened up his trunk and had
32:36
a little bag of roots. There was probably 10
32:38
or 15 roots. And he said, this is a single variety.
32:40
So he handed it to me, and I took him home. And
32:42
then we propagated it. And then we grew rivers
32:46
for a period of time. You know, the old infamous
32:50
goal of 2020? Yep. That variety actually did
32:55
it. In commercial production? In commercial production.
32:58
Once or more than once? Once, and then it went
33:01
to hell. This is probably in 2007 when we had
33:04
our big fire here on the farm, and we had many
33:08
of the other farmers in Moxie who thankfully
33:11
helped us pick. So that field that was down along
33:15
the river, it's called the river. That's how
33:18
it got its name, the rivers. It was planted along
33:20
the river, Yakima River. Yeah, there's the Yakima
33:22
River, and we used to own land down there that
33:24
we eventually sold to the DNR. Well, we sold
33:27
it to the National Conservancy. Conservancy,
33:29
yeah, yeah. but there's when you drop down below
33:32
the bench between yakima and moxie well thorpe
33:36
road right where the yeah yeah but there's that
33:38
bench that runs north south along kind of adjacent
33:41
to the river generally speaking and when you
33:44
drop down below that bench is where we had them
33:46
planted i remember but i also remember like Really,
33:51
really bad salt accumulation down there because
33:53
there wasn't any drainage. So it's questionable
33:56
whether the drop in yield was related to the
33:59
variety or whether it was related to planting
34:02
them on a non -draining riverbed. It was probably
34:06
a combination of the year, you know, maybe a
34:09
low precipitation year. Yeah. And so anyway,
34:11
that field was picked by a neighbor. So that's
34:14
why it was 19, almost 20 % alpha, and it was
34:18
20 bales to the acre. Where is this plant now?
34:22
I remember because we wanted to retain the strain.
34:26
And so when we sold that property, we moved it
34:29
to, I think, one location. Then we moved it to
34:31
another field. We actually just ripped that field
34:34
out because we had to idle it for two years and
34:36
it wasn't in good condition. But we saved the
34:38
roots and they're in the breeding program right
34:40
now. And we're in the process of getting them
34:43
cleaned up, like cleaned up of viruses. Excellent.
34:47
Yep. Are we the only ones that have it? Yeah.
34:50
So we have this plant that has done 2020. Yep.
34:55
But it came from Chuck privately. Yep. Hand to
34:59
hand. Interesting. Yeah. Continue the story.
35:04
So then the fifth line of CTZ was, you know,
35:10
loop or fresh path. F -1000, which I think is
35:13
such a great name. It's like the, you know, there's
35:15
that Saturday Night Live skit where there's the
35:17
William Shatner Turbo 2000 toupee. Yeah. Every
35:21
time there's like a thousand with something,
35:24
I just can't, I can't not think about that skit.
35:28
See, I'm thinking about like a, you know what
35:30
the irony is? Yeah, there's that too, but I mean,
35:33
there's also the wig. You know, I mentioned,
35:36
no, this is just a little sidebar. Wait, are
35:38
we sidebar on a sidebar right now? Well, no.
35:41
So we're talking Lupo Fresh called it F -1000,
35:46
right? Yep. Which it came out that they stole
35:49
the roots from the field. From what field? Whose
35:53
field? I mean, this is all like, we're not seeing
35:56
anything that wasn't revealed in discovery. That's
35:59
right. This is all public knowledge. And so Harold
36:03
Durgey, who ran Lupo Fresh, he directed his manager,
36:08
which I mentioned earlier, Danny Hallman, who...
36:11
made it public. It was the son of Don Holman,
36:15
who was next anyway. So then what's funny is
36:20
Harold named it F -1000. The original selection,
36:26
which I call Selection 26, there's more history
36:29
to it, was called F -10 by YCR. When you ask
36:35
them a chief group, they called it F10. So the
36:38
funny thing was that Harold called it F1000.
36:41
It was kind of a little parody. That's pretty
36:44
funny. Yep. Yep. Which, by the way, Danny Hallman's
36:47
a great guy. Yeah. And his dad and the family.
36:50
Yeah. And we knew that we grew up side by side.
36:53
Yeah. I mean, I remember growing up around the
36:55
Hallmans and actually just got to spend some
36:58
time with Danny randomly at. Hop convention.
37:03
Hop convention, yeah, this year. It was really
37:05
fun. Yeah, good kid. Yeah, it was great to see
37:09
him again. Yeah. When my father really started
37:12
in farming, well, he had seven kids, Donnie and
37:16
a guy named Neil Holman. Oh, okay. I just can't
37:21
remember Neil's last name. But they were my father's
37:24
left and right hand. And Neil always carried
37:28
a little pliers on the side of his belt. He was
37:31
the mechanic and Don was the farmer. Love it.
37:34
Yeah. Anyway, so Loop or Fresh has it. Hop Union
37:39
has it. Steiner has it. We have it. And it being
37:43
some variation of this category. Right. Yeah.
37:46
And nobody knows where it came from except for
37:50
Chuck. How was Brett? So Chuck, I mean, he might
37:54
have shared with somebody, but he didn't share
37:56
with you. apparently maybe took it all to the
37:59
grave. Yes. That's what the perception is. So
38:04
anyway, so you have these dueling patents starting
38:07
off in 1992. And so it's going through its process.
38:12
And it really didn't come, so Hop Union has it,
38:15
which Hop Union ends up selling to Haas. This
38:19
is a little later in time. Lupo Fresh ends up
38:22
selling to Haas. Haas didn't know that the F
38:26
-1000s came from nefarious actions by them. And
38:32
so it gets crazy. So then after the fall of symphony
38:36
and powdery mildew starting in 1997. What program
38:40
did symphony come out of? Haas. And I was going
38:43
to mention this earlier when I said, well, was
38:45
Chuck breeding privately? the original private
38:52
breeding program or were the was that the part
38:57
of the origins but of private breeding but it
39:00
sounds like haas and probably others too had
39:02
had kind of a private breeding program you can
39:05
go back in the history of breeding but i mean
39:08
Was breeding selecting random plants from the
39:11
field? Was it actual crosses? So that's where
39:13
I'm not too sure. Do you know, was Symphony actually,
39:16
like, crossed, or was it a... I believe it was.
39:19
Yeah. Yeah, I could look it up, but I didn't
39:21
look it up because it had such a short history.
39:23
It came out, planted in 97. They went to a whole
39:26
bunch of acres, I think maybe 500 acres. Which
39:29
was quite a bit for the time. Yeah, at the time.
39:31
And it was really the first alpha. You know,
39:33
bullions, prior to that, we had bullions, which
39:35
never really did well. We had, you know... Galena,
39:37
the rise of Galena, Eroica, Talisman, some of
39:41
these things that were much higher than cluster
39:43
varieties. You know, it really was about a picking
39:46
window. You know, during that time, we started
39:48
raising tetanangs, the noble hop, because we
39:51
would start harvest in the middle of August and
39:53
finish towards the end of September. Then we
39:56
lost that whole early picking window of tetanangs,
39:58
and even to some degree, willamets. Now we don't
40:02
start until what? September 1? No, we're starting
40:07
usually like still like back end of August. Hopefully
40:10
some stuff out of the breeding program fills
40:12
in that gap. It looks promising. But that was
40:14
like one of the goals all along the breeding
40:16
was to fill in those picking windows. But anyway,
40:19
as we go down this path, during that time, you
40:25
know, Vaughn Horse Company in the 80s, they go
40:28
belly up. We, along with... The Demery family,
40:34
Lansing family, which is our cousins, and then
40:37
Morford's. Start Western Hop after we bought
40:41
the funk company from Louis Von Horse, which
40:46
created a whole bunch. Then we got sued multiple
40:48
times over that whole process, and that's another
40:51
story. So that didn't last very long. Playing
40:55
in the international market as a bunch of growers
40:58
was not fun. We would lose. bids by a penny a
41:04
pound so you know those what when we got into
41:08
the international market there was not a lot
41:10
of happiness to see a bunch of growers in that
41:14
place anyway so we sold to hop union so we took
41:19
johannes reiser in or hop union in as a partner
41:23
so it was western the owners of western and hop
41:26
union that lasted about a year or two then we
41:28
sold it to completely to Hop Union and exited
41:32
that whole game. So my knowledge of that is a
41:37
little lax because at that time I was involved
41:40
in the various hop organizations in the United
41:44
States, whether it's the Commission, Hop Growers
41:46
of America. But part of their charter was you
41:49
could not be a merchant and be on these boards.
41:52
That would be complicated today. That's gone
41:54
by the wayside. But back then it was. So my father
41:57
and I decided that would be... kept out of the
42:01
whole western thing and that would be a farmer
42:04
and i could be on the board but eventually i
42:06
left too whether voluntarily involuntary but
42:09
so how so there was some litigation around what
42:13
litigation you mentioned litigation started around
42:16
what's around tomahawk columbus around everything
42:20
so it all kind of happens around pottery mildew
42:23
so when haas decides that they need a replacement
42:29
for symphony they go to hop union and secure
42:33
a patent or a right to grow columbus and then
42:41
i believe tomahawk was in there because we end
42:43
up getting all these roots i mean it was crazy
42:45
i mean we got columbus we got tomahawk we got
42:49
we did not get zeus at that time we got it later
42:52
but um but there was a lot of mix it was just
42:55
i mean it was horrible and the Trying to control
42:58
powdery mildew with chemicals was just horrible.
43:01
It did more damage than the disease, practically.
43:03
Because weren't a lot of those plant growth regulators
43:06
that have a plant PGR effect on them? Right.
43:09
So then powdery mildew was not something new
43:13
to the world. So we worked with UK. I spent a
43:16
lot of time going over to the UK. I worked with
43:18
Peter Glendening and others. about how they worked,
43:22
how they controlled powdery mildew, learned a
43:24
lot. Within three years of powdery mildew, we
43:26
had got rid of all chemical, and we were using
43:29
natural controls, whether it was sulfur and then
43:34
some phosphoric acids, you know, spraying. We
43:37
pretty well got out of all that. We had a HOP
43:41
meeting, HOP Girls of America meeting, probably
43:44
in 98, and then Peter Glendening and others came
43:48
over to talk about... the future of the u .s
43:51
with powdery mildew most of them said you have
43:55
no varieties you have no chemicals you have no
43:57
expertise your path is done because you know
44:03
it happened so fast and we had to respond so
44:06
fast we had no chemicals we had no nothing and
44:09
the credit of ann george and others we did get
44:11
the chemicals maybe not the most friendly ones
44:13
but we got them so anyway Going back to the story
44:17
on CTC. Well, chemicals and experience because,
44:20
you know, we still keep the chemicals to a minimum.
44:24
I'd say we use them. We do use some of them more
44:27
in a preventative fashion just because I think
44:30
the tolerances and the acceptance for, you know,
44:36
powdery mildew is extremely low. And so we want
44:40
to make sure that we meet those specs. And so,
44:42
you know, so could we run an all -natural program?
44:46
I would argue yes, but there's costs and acceptance
44:51
that would be involved in that that we'd have
44:53
to consider pretty heavily. But at the time when
44:56
you guys were figuring it out, there was probably,
44:58
and given the fact that most of those hops were
45:02
probably getting, I don't know, further processed
45:05
in some way, shape, or form or used on the hot
45:07
side of brewing, there was probably more acceptance
45:10
for some, I don't know if you want to call it
45:13
contamination. A little bit of powdery mildew.
45:15
Anyway. So going back to 92, 93, both Hopping
45:20
Union and Yakima Chief applied for patents and
45:25
our trademarks. What the problem was, Yakima
45:29
Chief was working on Tomahawk, which since they
45:33
had already been in trade for multiple years,
45:36
they could not get a patent, but they could trademark
45:39
the name Tomahawk, which they did. It became
45:42
Tomahawk. So then what happened during this symphony
45:47
changeover, when Haas went to source writs from
45:52
Hopp Union and maybe Yakima Chief also, which
45:56
it seemed like they had some writs, there was
45:57
discussion about royalty of sorts, so much per
46:00
acre. Then this whole thing about the different
46:04
patents potentially coming forward, who owned
46:06
it, where it came from, came out, and then Haas...
46:11
There was agreements made that never were signed.
46:13
It was really a mess. In the meantime, Haas then
46:18
sues Acoma Chief or Hopper Union. I can't remember
46:25
which one. I have to go back to my notes here.
46:26
One or both of them stating that the patents
46:30
were illegal because it was illegally crossed
46:33
by Chuck Zimmerman with non -public variety.
46:38
And that's where this whole controversy of did
46:40
Chuck have, you know, rights to it? I ran across
46:43
some literature that said Chuck had gotten permission
46:46
to use this one male that they think is the father.
46:52
But Oregon says no. So it's really controversial.
46:57
So anyway, so Haas. And was never, never fully.
47:00
No, Freddie Bette. Yeah. Yeah, because Chuck's
47:02
the only one that knew for sure. And he kept
47:04
it. So they're in a lawsuit. Haas sues them for
47:10
illegal, that this hop variety was not, it could
47:13
not be privately patented. So Haas, prior to
47:18
this, this is a little background. So Haas had
47:20
sold their craft business to direct hops, the
47:25
Peterbaugh family, with a non -compete. So when
47:28
Hop Union World went down, Haas bought Hop Union
47:33
USA. Steiner bought part of Hop Union Czech,
47:38
Spain, and other countries. But since Hop Union
47:42
bought Hop Union USA, they had this craft business
47:48
growing with Ralph Olsen at the helm. And so
47:54
Peter Boss had a non -compete, so Haas had to
47:59
sell the craft part of Hop Union. Ralph Olsen
48:04
wanted to buy it, but he couldn't put together
48:06
all the pieces. Hence, Mike Smith comes in, puts
48:10
the pieces together, new ownership, and then
48:13
the rest is history. It ran separately for a
48:17
while and then eventually merged. But anyway,
48:20
back to the lawsuits. Now, you know, Haas has
48:26
sued Pop Union and YCR or YCH. We're getting
48:32
sued. You know, Lupa Fresh is in litigation over
48:37
stolen roots, so it was very complicated. So
48:39
they called me in to help union. At that time,
48:42
Dennis Bacchus was the president, and Greg Lewis
48:45
was kind of working in there. And so I go into
48:49
the office. It was more of a mediation than it
48:52
was a deposition or anything. So we're sitting
48:55
there talking, and the lawyer's there, and there's
48:57
Dennis, and they're talking about the history
48:59
of Rivers. And I told them the whole story. I
49:03
mean, I had nothing to hide. It was very, in
49:05
our view, it was a very legitimate acquisition.
49:09
And we weren't a major threat. You know, we only
49:12
had 30, 40 acres at the time. So we're sitting
49:16
there talking, and then the lawyer says, well,
49:19
it's time for a break. So we took a break, and
49:21
Dennis Bacchus goes, hey, Les, we've got to get
49:23
these contracts signed. And the lawyer looks
49:25
at me and looks at me. Both of them, he says,
49:29
you kidding me? We're going through this whole
49:30
thing, and you guys are going to be signing contracts
49:32
during the break? I said, welcome to the hop
49:36
industry. That sounds totally right. Yeah. So
49:42
we're in litigation, but we're still making contracts
49:45
with each other. So it's Hop Union that sued
49:47
Roy's? Yeah. Because they had the lead as far
49:53
as they felt they had the right. to it and that
49:56
goes back to where chuck move as chuck moved
49:58
through these various organizations there was
50:01
trails of columbus and and or of this variety
50:04
left behind were there sisters were they the
50:07
actual variety who knows so hop union this is
50:11
before they they kind of divvied up and got bought
50:17
out yeah sued roy farms yes because they believed
50:22
that they had the right under Columbus? Yes.
50:27
Okay. But Rivers was not the same variety? Well,
50:32
we acquired 10 roots from Chuck Zimmerman directly,
50:37
hand -to -hand. And he said that they were a
50:40
unique variety. Now, we'd probably need to genetically
50:43
test that. I mean, definitely. You know exactly
50:45
what we're doing after we record this, right?
50:47
We're genetically testing it. No, we're going
50:49
right out there and finding this baby. Well,
50:54
I know where they're at. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's
50:57
go take a peek. Yeah. So during that time, as
51:00
I said, you know, Haas buys Hopping Union. Haas
51:04
buys Lupo Fresh. Didn't know that there was a
51:06
lawsuit for stolen rents. So it did things really
51:09
a mess. And I don't know how, but eventually
51:13
everybody just kind of went to their corners
51:15
and just left it alone. Really? Yeah. There was
51:18
supposedly some royalties to be paid, but there
51:22
was... Deals and you know who's gonna pay who
51:25
wasn't gonna pay and it was very wasn't very
51:27
equitable the patent couldn't be Couldn't be
51:31
verified Genetically yet Zeus in there and Zeus
51:34
was just this outlier, but it was very similar
51:37
to Columbus and Tomahawk Likewise, we have rivers
51:40
that are very similar and this is when you know
51:43
during the 90s God, you know, we're going through
51:47
the antitrust lawsuits. The hot marketing order
51:49
has gone away. We got powdery mildew coming in.
51:52
It was just so many things going on. And the
51:53
cost of litigation was horrible. So I think...
51:59
Sounds like there's too many other pressing kind
52:02
of just issues out there to really try and force
52:06
resolution on that one. Yeah, it was very disfocusing.
52:09
Then that strain, let's say the CTZ strain, became
52:13
very almost as... Well, CTZ category, right?
52:18
Came as just as almost as to powdery mildew.
52:23
Powdery mildew always goes to the dominant varieties.
52:26
And so when Symphony left, it went right to CTZ.
52:31
Galena, another one. So, I mean, powdery mildew
52:37
seems to be able to change to the most dominant
52:40
variety. As we look through history, we can see
52:42
that. You know, Cascades had the R9. I think
52:46
it was R9. They're different genes, and they
52:48
get broken very quickly. So, you know, Cascade
52:51
never got it originally. Willamette never got
52:53
it originally. And then over time, CTZ was the
52:56
first one that got it after Symphony was taken
52:58
out. Galena was very susceptible. I remember
53:01
that. Yeah. Then eventually it moved to the other
53:04
varieties. I'm not sure there's very many varieties.
53:07
There's varieties out there that would be resistant.
53:10
And so... When does that break if it becomes
53:13
a dominant one? If you look in German varietal
53:17
mix, you know, Hercules and some of the new varieties,
53:20
Polaris and Titan, they all had some degree of
53:25
resistance initially, but eventually that was
53:28
broke. Did the lawsuits play into the settlement
53:34
in any way, shape, or form that eventually formed
53:37
HBC? Yes. Talk about that a little bit. Well,
53:45
because, you know, here you have Haas. Now, you
53:48
know, Haas has bought, you know, Hoppe Union
53:50
has bought Lupo Fresh. They need access to a
53:53
variety. There was talk of an agreement between
53:57
them, between Haas and Yakima Chief. And there
54:01
was other, the antitrust. I mean, there was just
54:03
so many things going on. And this litigation
54:05
back and forth was. So the antitrust lawsuits
54:09
were happening simultaneously? During that time
54:12
period. And it went on because it was first the
54:14
growers against the merchants, and then it was
54:16
brewers against the merchants, and I can't think.
54:18
That's how AB ended up with the farm in northern
54:21
Idaho. You have to remember, these breeding programs
54:24
are costing, we know what it costs a year to
54:27
run one of these things. And it was expensive
54:29
back in those days, and it wasn't producing anything.
54:34
Breeding with controlled crosses for males and
54:37
females is not an easy process. You're looking
54:39
at, what, 10, 15 years, 15 years to get a variety
54:42
out? Ten -ish. Yeah, so they had started, you
54:45
know, probably in the 70s and 80s, and there
54:47
was no new varieties coming out that made any
54:50
difference. So the cost was horrible, and I think
54:55
that was part of the impetus to join. So that
55:00
led to the... The litigation that was going on,
55:03
the cost of running a breeding program, and I
55:06
think there's probably some other elements that
55:08
I'm not aware of, probably led to this HBC. Each
55:13
one of them, YCR, kept some varieties not brought
55:18
into HBC. So that's why it's complicated. Simcoe
55:21
being one of them. In a tandem, I think, and
55:24
there's another one I can't remember. Warrior
55:26
and Palisade. Yeah, Warrior and Palisade. Haw
55:28
is also retained. Yeah. Millennium, Tilikum.
55:31
Palisade. Oh, but they threw in. Millennium grew
55:36
like a beast. It didn't produce, but it produced
55:39
a vine. It looked good. It looked good from the
55:42
road. But then that's the way. And then Hawes
55:46
put in this variety that wasn't very well liked.
55:50
It was called a number. I can't remember the
55:52
number, but ultimately became Citra. And Jason
55:54
Peralt identified it in the joint breeding. And
55:58
here we are with those varieties. Yeah, I think
56:01
that thing. hung around for a long time before
56:04
it was selected into craft. Simcoe was the same
56:07
way. There were other varieties that just kind
56:09
of languished there. Then when the craft beer
56:12
movement started, then those things became something.
56:15
Cascade was the leader in that. I think it's
56:21
important to note that one of the main reasons
56:23
there were so many lawsuits about the CTZ deal.
56:27
is because it yielded so much more than anything
56:31
else. It would have put if one company. Huge
56:34
competitive advantage, right? Yeah, it would
56:36
have put everybody else. Yeah. When was Hercules
56:39
released? Probably, well, it was the United States
56:44
back in those days was probably about 78 % alpha
56:47
and just 10 % to 20 % aroma hops. We couldn't
56:51
compete with the noble aromas of Europe. And
56:55
so the Germans not having a alpha option, they
57:00
were kind of relegated to the aroma side. We
57:03
were relegated to the alpha side. Well, they
57:05
decided they wanted to get alpha, so they went
57:08
down the breeding program. They had low trellis,
57:10
too. I visited a lot of their low trellis. We
57:12
had actually low trellis varieties from our breeding
57:14
program licensed in Europe. That's another discussion.
57:17
But they produced the first one that came out
57:20
was Magnum before Hercules. And then Magnum came
57:24
out, and it was the first higher alpha varieties
57:29
that Germany had. They didn't control it, so
57:32
it got all over the world. So Germany took off
57:36
on this alpha trail, and I always kid around
57:38
with Juan Picklemeyer and others that you guys
57:41
took off on the alpha trail, and you got to the
57:43
top. They are the primary alpha producers today.
57:47
And they were the king of the alpha world. And
57:52
they looked around. We were already gone. We
57:54
were over on the craft beer movement producing
57:58
aroma hops. Or flavor hop, they like to say.
58:01
Yeah. 2005. Yeah. Our dear producer, Liz, just...
58:08
Oh, identified. Hercules or Magnum? Hercules.
58:12
Hercules. Oh, man. Good job, Liz. Thank you.
58:17
So, you know, there's... CTC has been... It's
58:22
been predicted to be going, failed, going to
58:26
go to the scrap heap so many times. It's like
58:29
Cascades. The variety everyone loves to hate.
58:32
They keep saying it's done. It's probably going
58:34
to wipe out. I don't know if people hate Cascade.
58:38
Well, I mean, if you look at the acreage, it
58:40
just goes up and down. Well, that's because there's
58:42
no controls. Yeah. Or management. No, it was
58:45
the breweries. You know, because originally the
58:47
very first one was Coors. We're going to debate
58:49
this one, but go ahead. No, Coors. was the first
58:52
one that really made a big move. They offered
58:54
a dollar a pound where the market was at 60,
58:56
70 cents to grow Cascades. So it just went crazy
59:00
wild. Then Coors bought all this. They actually
59:04
built a warehouse for the storage of all these
59:07
excess. Once they started producing whichever
59:10
beer they did, which was probably Coors, they
59:13
found out that they couldn't use it at the rate
59:15
they thought they could. And so they accumulated.
59:19
millions of pounds of Cascades in this warehouse.
59:22
I remember going and visiting it. How many years
59:25
ago was this? Oh, my God. It would have been
59:27
the 70s probably. I'm going to say a dollar a
59:29
pound. Yeah, that was a lot. It was an enticement
59:35
to grow it. So maybe then it went to heck because
59:40
they didn't need any more. Then AB came in and
59:44
a few others came in, you know, like Sierra was
59:46
probably getting started. And so it never really
59:50
fully recovered. So, interesting. What? I don't
59:55
think that people are looking at Cascade and
1:00:01
thinking it's going to fail. And I don't think
1:00:04
that people hate Cascade. That's my point. All
1:00:07
right. Cascade has had just as much or more volatility
1:00:13
than a lot of varieties because... It has to
1:00:17
be the most from how much actually gets brewed
1:00:20
with. I bet it's fairly level. Yeah. But every
1:00:23
time it goes short, everybody and their dogs
1:00:26
like, oh, we'll go plant that. I mean, that thing
1:00:28
got up to like 9 ,000 acres or something. Yeah.
1:00:31
In 2014, 15, 16, something like that. And then
1:00:35
just. We were part of that one. Yeah. Of the.
1:00:44
I think you and everybody else. We were part
1:00:45
of the crater. Yeah. Now, CTZ, I will agree that
1:00:51
everyone keeps talking about the demise of CTZ
1:00:54
and somehow it just kind of keeps on chugging
1:00:56
along. Nothing has proven to be consistently
1:00:59
better than that. I mean, is CTZ the best out
1:01:03
there? No, but there's a level of consistency
1:01:05
that you can count on. You know, the variability
1:01:07
of some of these other varieties. I mean, the
1:01:10
proposed demise of... CTZ led to Millennium,
1:01:15
led to Warrior being the new substitute for them.
1:01:19
And there's other varieties since then too, but
1:01:21
they never could quite match it. I mean, okay,
1:01:25
in one acre trials, you know. Is Tomahawk grown
1:01:30
much anymore? Yeah, it's just called CTZ. Good
1:01:36
point. Maybe a better question is, is it branded?
1:01:41
Is the brand used or they've moved on to kind
1:01:44
of the next? I think the only brand that is accepted
1:01:48
or qualified I've ever heard of anymore by big
1:01:51
brewers is Zeus. It's either CTZ or Zeus. Which
1:01:53
I was going to mention that. Just pull out a
1:01:56
different stencil when you harvest it. Well,
1:01:58
no. Like Mike said, we grew up. We had rivers.
1:02:03
Columbus, we had Tomahawk, and we had Zeus. Which,
1:02:07
per our discussion and Drew's point that he made
1:02:11
just a second ago, they're kind of all the same.
1:02:16
Maybe not Rivers. Maybe not Rivers. Maybe not
1:02:19
Zeus. I don't know. Supposedly, Zeus has done
1:02:23
the Pepsi challenge against Tomahawk and Columbus.
1:02:29
No one's ever thrown River into that mix. I don't
1:02:33
think anybody knows that exists. No one knows
1:02:35
that exists. We never took it anywhere. We never
1:02:40
formally released it. I guess we could have.
1:02:43
We grew it and threw it into, like, a generic
1:02:47
or, you know, an approved alpha bucket, but we
1:02:50
never tried to identify it. You know where a
1:02:54
lot of them went to was CalSec. Along with the
1:02:57
rivers did? Yeah. When we were doing those alpha
1:03:01
extractions, we were, you know, delivering to
1:03:03
CalSec and others with the MRW group, which is
1:03:10
talked about in Steve Carpenter's book, which
1:03:12
is Morford, Roy, and Wyckoff. Did Morford or
1:03:17
Wyckoff ever grow rivers? No. Just us? Yeah.
1:03:21
But CalSec had a very strong need for CTZ because
1:03:27
their process was built around CTZ. where, you
1:03:32
know, some of the other extraction and downstream
1:03:33
products. CalSec was pretty much a downstream
1:03:36
product company. Then you have, you know, the
1:03:39
various extracts and partitioning of them now.
1:03:44
You know, that's like why Pico is resurging because
1:03:47
Pico has a very unique chemistry that works well
1:03:52
in certain type of downstream products. That's
1:03:55
the same thing with CTZ for CalSec. While it
1:03:58
may... Agronomically, it may have some challenges,
1:04:02
but as you go down the process to the brewery,
1:04:06
depending on which path you take, those varieties
1:04:08
have benefits. So if I'm hearing all this right,
1:04:11
we don't know the origin of CTZ, but we know
1:04:16
who it came from. We don't know anything before
1:04:19
that. We know there was a big battle over who
1:04:23
had the rights to it. It turned into a massive
1:04:28
mess of everybody suing. Everybody. And it's
1:04:34
got staying power, and it's been around for...
1:04:36
You know what's really funny? Actually, I will
1:04:39
correct myself where I said the only name that's
1:04:42
used in breweries is Zeus. Yep. That's largely
1:04:48
true, I think, in the large multinational brewers.
1:04:50
Especially down in South America and other places.
1:04:53
But in craft, it's called Columbus. Maybe because
1:04:57
of the early involvement of Hop Union. I mean,
1:05:00
I don't know. That's what I would think. Yeah,
1:05:02
it has its own line, but it's still a craft hop.
1:05:06
But it's picked at a different, a more aromatic
1:05:10
time. Well, I think that's sort of the uniqueness.
1:05:14
You know, early pick, medium pick, and late pick.
1:05:16
Different things. And then where it's grown to.
1:05:21
We found that in Summit was an early picked one.
1:05:25
And Norma picked one that was different. The
1:05:27
different flavor profiles that appealed to different
1:05:33
breweries. I mean, different areas. As we know,
1:05:36
there's some variety. I'm not going to name varieties,
1:05:39
but there's probably varieties that are very
1:05:42
much accepted from this area, but not accepted
1:05:45
from that area because there is differences.
1:05:48
I mean, it's like terroir. It's like a wine grape.
1:05:51
The CTZ is... It's an interesting one. It's as
1:05:56
tumultuous as the path was to today, it's still
1:06:00
there. And it's a free variety. We grow a couple
1:06:03
acres of it. Yes, we do. I mean, there's other
1:06:08
little nuances to this whole CTZ story. Some
1:06:11
of them are unsubstantiated rumors, statements,
1:06:15
things like that. Well, thanks. I think we covered
1:06:20
it. Well, probably maybe creative. More questions.
1:06:25
It might have created more questions. We may
1:06:27
need a follow -up episode on this one. Maybe
1:06:30
I'll get a few calls about maybe I missed something.
1:06:34
I'm sure everyone has an opinion and everyone
1:06:37
thinks that they have tidbits that should be
1:06:41
included. Yeah, for sure. Well, I'll tell you
1:06:44
what, great episode of No Dirt, No Flowers. Love
1:06:47
it. Thank you. Mr. Roy, thank you for coming
1:06:49
on again.