[feldon30]

I'm not so quick to dismiss formal or informal winners at tomato tastings as long as some heavy hitters are present. Earl's Faux and Stump of the World are IMO, heavy hitters.

JD's Special C-Tex was especially delicious at the 2007 SETTFest. Despite the scoresheets and an attempt to quantify tomatoes, there were just too many tomatoes and too little data to really count. As I found when I visited Suze's place, tasting more than 30 tomato varieties in a row is quite difficult. Over 50 seems unlikely in one sitting.

We didn't have any scoring sheets or make any attempt at accuracy in 2008, but as I was going down Michael Gunn's table, preparing samples of different varieties, it was by pure chance that I sampled Mountaineer Mystery. In fact I did not expect much as the tomato was very large and cracked at the top. However it was exceptional. I had Suze and a few others come over and they felt that it was the best or one of the best at the event.

Now again neither of these were quantified results, but the number of people who saved seeds of Mountaineer Mystery truly surprised me.


Varieties taste different from year to year. Paul Robeson was delicious in '07 and just so-so in '08. But each variety has a potential. Celebrity has a different flavor potential than Stump of the World. I choose to grow varieties that have a higher "flavor potential" in the hopes that if the soil, temperature, and rainfall are right, I'll have exceptional tomatoes.