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Hatch chilie in jeopardy?

Ruid said:
This seems on par with saying ghost peppers are only ghost peppers if they're grown in India.
I see the point this trying to make, and it has some merit, but...
It's different from that, bc "Hatch" is a specific place. It's more like the whole champagne ain't really champagne of it wasn't made in Champagne, nah mean?

Anything else is just sparkling wine.

Now, I suspect the whole Hatch mystique is more marketing than anything else. But you can't be growing these Green chiles in Hoboken and call'm "Hatch...."
 
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This is from 2016. I used "leftover" seed from 4 different packs of seed, 4 different vendors, 4 different "varieties" of Anaheim. I know that one of them was Big Jim, forgot the rest. I estimate there were 20+ plants in 3 tight rows, all open pollinated. This basket is one of four harvested. It was an excellent season.

I have a sackful of seeds, if anyone wants or needs some, let me know. Hatch NM may be in jeopardy, but I don't think the peppers will be, at least not until the next Krakatoa....
 
Voodoo 6 said:
You are correct Sir! Like Bordeaux and San Marzano. Cheers!
 

Except with San Marzano's being grown in volcanic soil and people being able to tell the difference by taste. There needs to be something about the region aside from just the name.
 
Well, it's hard to say, I am not sure if the soil, climate, or micro climate has anything to do with it. One thing I would not dispute is the knowledge of the growers there. they have been at it for decades. Like Bordeaux, the growers have simply elevated the skill to an art form. The growers together with CPI, have put out great genetics. Cheers!
 
Voodoo 6 said:
Well, it's hard to say, I am not sure if the soil, climate, or micro climate has anything to do with it. One thing I would not dispute is the knowledge of the growers there. they have been at it for decades. Like Bordeaux, the growers have simply elevated the skill to an art form. The growers together with CPI, have put out great genetics. Cheers!
 

I've never grown anything. Suppose I moved to Hatch and started some seeds with all the knowledge I don't have. Would they be legit?
 
Bicycle808 said:
It's different from that, bc "Hatch" is a specific place. It's more like the whole champagne ain't really champagne of it wasn't made in Champagne, nah mean?

Anything else is just sparkling wine.
 
 
Except that not just any old sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region can be marketed as Champagne. There are specific regulations that dictate how the grapes must be grown, fermented and pressed. It is illegal to label it as Champagne if it does not conform to all of the regulations, regardless of whether it was grown and produced in the Champagne region or not. So there is really a lot more to the name than just where the grapes were grown.
 
By contrast, it appears that the only criteria for "Hatch chile" is that they are grown in Hatch. That is all. It is not clear to me why that should be so important in and of itself. To me, the heat and flavor of a pepper is what matters. Where the pepper was grown seems kind of beside the point.
 
BlackFatalii said:
 
Except that not just any old sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region can be marketed as Champagne. There are specific regulations that dictate how the grapes must be grown, fermented and pressed. It is illegal to label it as Champagne if it does not conform to all of the regulations, regardless of whether it was grown and produced in the Champagne region or not. So there is really a lot more to the name than just where the grapes were grown.
 
By contrast, it appears that the only criteria for "Hatch chile" is that they are grown in Hatch. That is all. It is not clear to me why that should be so important in and of itself. To me, the heat and flavor of a pepper is what matters. Where the pepper was grown seems kind of beside the point.
Any other criteria notwithstanding, it ain't champagne if its not from Champagne. If someone were to meet all the other requirements somewhere other than Champagne, they still couldn't call their product "champagne."

Personally, I don't gaf about Hatch chiles at all. But that's what the term means: Hatch chiles were grown in Hatch. The varieties that are popularly grown in Hatch can be grown elsewhere, obviously, but they tend to carry a different moniker if they were. The only exception would be when unethical growers are trying to pass their product off as something it is not.
 
I think it's kind of cool that these people, over the course of decades, have developed a few lines of chilies that are tuned to their local climate, and are also flavorful and popular.
 
I haven't watched all the videos, but I'm assuming they save their seeds from season to season instead of buying them from Monsanto/Bayer.  I like to see some people having commercial success doing it this way.
 
My guess is that Hatch chilies will grow just fine in the next valley over, and are probably OK in Colorado or further away.  But it wouldn't surprise me at all if growing them down here in South Alabama would be a whole different story.
 
DontPanic said:
 
 
My guess is that Hatch chilies will grow just fine in the next valley over, and are probably OK in Colorado or further away.  But it wouldn't surprise me at all if growing them down here in South Alabama would be a whole different story.
 
I have pics somewhere of a crop of Anaheims of unknown variety I grew over ten years ago that easily reached seven feet tall by the first week of August. I've never been able to recreate that grow, the garden then was inside the perimeter of what was 100 years before the holding pen behind a long ago tore-down barn. I can remember the smell of barnyard coming out of the dirt when I tilled or watered.
 
Two points: It was zone 3 with a scant 3 month growing season, and I've wished ever since that I were smart enough to have saved seed from that crop (or the dirt from that garden).
 
They might grow a little different everywhere else, and they may not. But they will grow.
 
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