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)