Cherokee Purple: sweet, slightly acid, complex, wine-like, meaty, tender, thin skinned ... one of the top 3 tomatoes for flavor, IMO.

Indian Stripe: one of the top 2 tomatoes, IMO.

Excellent tasting tomato, and definitely my favorite.

EG

Cherokee Purple (and Cherokee Chocolate, which is essentially the same plant, with a different skin color) are on many, many peoples' 'must grow' favorites lists.

I think they are well worth growing and seeing how the do in your garden. Although labelled Purple, they are essentially a Black tomato. You should definitely include at least one black on your list.

They are a medium sized, mid season tomato, so I think would fit well with the other plants you plan on growing.

My only real caution would be that there's been a number of reports here of them behaving as semi-determinate. I certainly found this to be the case with my plants.

Other popular optiions include

Black Krim (and Noir de Crimee)
Paul Robeson
Black from Tula

It's really hard to describe taste to someone else since taste is personal and subjective and depends on so many variables such as weather, soil, etc.

The only way you'll know if you like it is to grow it and compare to other varieties that you've grown.

But you asked about Cherokee Purple so I'll stick to comments about it. It was one of my most favorite varieties when I grew it for the first time in about 1992, and I still like it for taste and production, but since then I do prefer the variety Indian Stripe, a version of CP, which pennyrile mentioned above.

Carolyn

KDawg that is interesting. I only have 2 big CPs on my plant now - one is a monster -nothing else is growing yet even though I have around 8 little babies kind of waiting to grow. I think they just started - maybe the big one is just about done growing. Is that what you would mean by semi determinate? Not growing fruit until others are done growing?

IMO, CP is a great tasting tomato, but get out there and pick 'em! In no time they turn into a big sack of rot. Not a well keeper by ANY means. BUt delicious!

I love them. One of my favorites. Not only do they taste great, but they seem to deal well with my climate (cool nights), produce a lot, and resist/tolerate local diseases well. My only "complaint" would be lots of cat-facing. Next year I'll give IS a try since some say it does less of this while sharing the other CP characteristics.

Well, I can't say anything for how well it grows or produces because as a first year gardener, I was completely clueless and grew no heirlooms out of my 15+ tomato plants. However, I can speak to the taste, since I've been almost exclusively buying CP's and Cherokee Chocolates all summer long at the local farmer's market; they are absolutely wonderful.

Others have already described the taste to a tee, but I have to echo their sentiments. They ROCK. They rock so hard that I've saved an abundance of seeds from them to grow next year (and I have about 10 seedlings that I started just to see if they'd grow, and they did, so now I don't know what to do with them so late in the season). I wish the market had some Indian Stripe so I could do some more seed saving, but I'll be happy enough with my CP's next year, for certain.

And not to hijack your thread, but does anyone have any recommendations for tomatoes that are kind of on par with the taste of CP? Obviously, since I like CP's, I enjoy very sweet tomatoes moreso than those that are very acidic. I saved some seeds from one Aunt Ruby's German Green, which I found to be particularly tasty, and some Isis Candy cherries, but I need to start thinking ahead to next year, and anything sweet, tasty and prolific needs to be on the list.

Look up momotaro - they are suppposed to be very sweet and prolific

Spaghetina,

In my garden Black Krim kicks CP up and down the school yard. It has a deeper, more complex and slightly sweeter flavor and lacks the little bit of acid bite of CP. It is also earlier. I'm sure it has something to do with my conditions because CP and Indian Stripe just are not that good here.