198: Becoming a Pomologist w/ Dr. Peck

10/23/19 • 64 min

Gregory M. Peck of the School of Integrative Plant Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York is the featured guest on episode 198.

Greg in Peck lab

Greg’s chat begins at 21:00 minutes into episode 198.

Before Greg’s feature I am reminded by @e_of_blandings That now is the time to pick Medlars. If you have a photo of a medlar please send them my way to [email protected] and I will in turn post the photos on Cider Chat’s social media, so we can all begin to increase our Medlar know how.

At 8:23 minutes in, I read a letter from Cider Chat Patreon Supporter and Russian cidermaker Maxim Brekht.

Maxim shares:

a range of obstacles that commercial makers in his country have to maneuver around in order to produce cider.
how the Peter Mitchel class informed him and what he is doing beyond the Mitchell class to improve his technical cider making skills.
the Russian palate for cider is not so different from other burgeoning cider communities around the world.

The Feature chat wth Greg Peck (at 21:00)

Greg has been in his role as Professor of Pomology at Cornell, since 2015.

Greg pointing to his door plaque that says, "Mad Scientist" under his name.

Greg discusses his initial research project at Cornell Assessing the Economic Feasibility of Growing Specialized Apple Cultivars for Sale to Commercial Hard Cider Producers

A bit on how the money works for grant writing a research project
How the United Kingdom has about the same amount of acreage of apples as New York state.

Says Greg Peck, “The cider industry is going to grow very rapidly”