Best-Tasting Tomatoes: 56 Heirloom Tomatoes Rated Excellent for Flavor

Best-Tasting Tomatoes: 56 Heirloom Tomatoes Rated Excellent for Flavor

Heirloom Tomatoes Rated as Having Excellent Flavor

From The Heirloom Tomato, by Amy Goldman

Currants & Cherries

• Black Cherry: Fruity and well-balanced. CR Lawn of Fedco Seeds gives this one the nod: “Yum!”
• Wild Sweetie: Super-sweet
• Matt’s Wild Cherry
• Sara’s Galapagos: Sweet; lots of flavor in a little package. Smells of the leaf.
• Blondköpfchen
• Gold Rush Currant: High acid and high sugar
• Green Doctors: Sweet and tart

Ribbed

• Ceylon: Excellent when cooked

Globes

• White Beauty
• Burpee’s Globe: Honey sweet
• Aunt Gertie’s Gold: Sumptuous, rich flavor
• Manitoba: Well-balanced, winey
• Red Rose: Very sweet and rich
• Yellow Peach: Well balanced
• Peach Blow Sutton: Cool and refreshing “tomato lite” flavor
• Russian Black: Earthy
• Flamme: Perfect blend of sweet and tart; fruity

Beefsteaks

• Pruden’s Purple: Luscious, savory, and sweet
• Black Krim: Green Giant: This is the best-tasting-green-when-ripe beefsteak.
• Aunt Ginny’s Purple: Rich flavor
• McClintock’s Big Pink: Delicious rich flavor
• Big Ben: A peach of a tomato—not as sweet as the Brandywines, but very rich.
• African Queen: Well-balanced, like wine—a taste I wish could last forever
• Believe It or Not: Perfectly balanced
• Hugh’s: Sweet and lemony. Seed-saving superman Neil Lockhart says Hugh’s is one of his favorites for flavor.
• Great White: Divinely sweet
• Santa Clara Canner: Well balanced
• Sudduth’s Brandywine: Like a fine wine. I dare any hybrid to measure up.
• Yellow Brandywine: High acid and high sugar. On everyone’s list of favorites.
• Bicolor Mortgage Lifter
• Marvel Striped: Sweet, one of the best bicolor beefsteaks
• Gold Medal: Well reviewed by tomato cognoscenti: “superbly
  delicious” (Darrell Merrell); “top rated in flavor” (Ken Ettlinger);
  “our finest bicolor” (Seed Savers Exchange)
• Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter: Well balanced
• Yellow Mortgage Lifter: Sweet and sprightly
• Mullen’s Mortgage Lifter

Pears & Plums

• Antique Roman: Beefy, savory
• Super Italian Paste
• Goldman’s Italian American: Sweet and luscious. Joan Dye Gussow,
  author of This Organic Life, wrote to me one summer: “Goldman’s Italian
  American tomato is a stunner. They taste lovely to say nothing of how
  they LOOK. One plant in an urn is setting absolutely gigantic tomatoes.”
• Old Ivory Egg: Sweet and lemony
• Opalka:
• Orange Banana: A worthy rival of Flamme
• Anna Russian: Nice tang, mildly sweet and savory
• Purple Russian
• Amish Paste
• Vilms
• Elfin: Fruity and sweet
• Chile Verde: Finely balanced

Oxhearts

• Orange Russian 117: Honey-sweet, finely balanced, endowed with rich flavor
• Hungarian Heart: Savory
• Japanese Oxheart: Winey, sweet, nice fruit acid

Color Groups

• Dixie Golden Giant: Sweet and pleasing
• Casady’s Folly: Fruity
• Speckled Roman: Sweet and savory
• Aunt Ruby’s German Green: A perfect balance of acid and sugar
• Pink Salad: Mouth-watering in the same way as Sugary (an F1
  hybrid  miniature pink plum tomato, winner of a 2005 All America
  Selections Award)