Mo, You're right in that I don't put up with much tomato foolishness. lol

If you want the best red grape tomato available, watch for the little red grape tomatoes sold in stores under the trademarked name "Santa Sweets". They are the original hybrid grape tomato that really started the grape tomato craze, but because of legal issues and lawsuits, their seed is no longer sold to home gardeners in the USA, although some folks say they have have saved seed from purchased "Santa Sweets", grow the tomatoes for their own use, and say they come true from seed. If you want to read about the legal issues, you can google and find the Wikipedia entry on grape tomatoes and I think it briefly mentions the legal stuff. Back before all that legal stuff happened, I grew Santa from seed purchased from Thompson and Morgan, but don't have any more of the seed and don't remember what happened to it. I think I lost the packet somewhere along the way because I know I hadn't used it up.

With red grape tomatoes, I haven't found one that tastes as good as Santa F-1, but I grow Juliet for dehydrating only. I don't like Juliet fresh because the skin is as tough as can be and the flavor is only average, but when you dehydrate it, the flavor improves and it doesn't matter that the skin is tough at that point. I think that some of the tomato seeds or plants sold as Red Grape are quite good and others are not, so suspect there are more than one red grape varieties being sold generically as Red Grape.

I grew and liked Orange Santa when Thompson and Morgan carried it. I think it now is available from Tatiana's Tomato Base this year. I think maybe it was from the same breeder who bred the red Santa F-1 hybrid but my memory is sort of fuzzy on that one.

The grape tomato we like best is a yellow one called "Ildi" and it has wonderful flavor and is a very heavy producer.

Rosalita is a very good to excellent pink grape type.

There are other red grape types available from places like Totally Tomatoes or Tomato Growers Supply Company, but I haven't found one yet that is as tasty as the original Santa F-1. Elfin is one that is small enough to grow in containers, and a yellow one that was new to us a couple of years ago and which performed well enough that it is part of our permanent growing rotation is Cuban Yellow Grape from Tomato Growers Supply.

Maybe Jay knows of a good red grape tomato, or maybe a purple or black one!

Dawn

If you like the grapes, you would probably like the "currant" types as well. Last year I grew Red Currant and it was delish to me.

Another grape is Jelly Bean - comes in both Red and Yellow. I had the red one. It was a bite of heaven to me. The seed was from Botanical Interests and I think I got them at TLC here in OKC. You can also order them online from BI.

I'm a newbie, too, so you may not wanna take my word for it because it could have been a fluke that these two were so good to me. I haven't logged as many tomato flight hours as Dawn.

Susan

I second the currant suggestion! I grew White Currant and Coyote (still trying to figure out if it's the same variety with two different names!) last year and they were a big favorite of everyone in our family. My grandmother loves sweet tomatoes and these were her favorites.

For grapes, there is a newer OP variety that I have heard good things about called Val's Red Nibbler. Glecker Seedmen has them and I posted a link below.

Like Dawn mentioned, I've heard of people having great success growing Santa Sweets from grocery store grape tomato seeds that they saved. Most people seem to find that the seed grows true, though I haven't tried it myself.

Here is a link that might be useful: Glecker

About 2 or 3 years back DW and I were tired of eating Christmas leftovers and went out for a pizza. I told DW that those little tomatoes were the best I had ever eaten.
I squeezed a few seed into a napkin and took them home, dried them and planted them in a few weeks in the window.
They grew to nice plants, I did have trouble with them splitting, and of course they did not taste as good in the summer when I had other tomatoes to compair them with, but they were good and very, very productive.

Larry