Do you know what disease the "blight" was, exactly?

Great response, thanks Dave.ithink I will do a variety.

Some good advise and links above from Dave. I enjoyed reviewing the threads on Opalkas with Carolyn's comments and histories. Opalka is the only paste tomato that I grow now. It is large, non-juicy and non-seedy. The plant starts out as a whispy, wimpy looking seedling, but grows into a rather large plant with large fruit. As with most tomatoes, you need to start spraying with a disease control (Daconile or Ortho Max) as soon as they go into the ground. Now I wish I knew how to keep the deer from stealing them.

John A

Dave is definitely correct. Grow as many plants as you want/need and use them all for sauce. It can always be reduced down or you can add tomato paste if it's too thin. I use a giant mix of heirlooms, pastes, slicers, etc. for everything I make in the kitchen and it's all together a wonderful thing. There's no reason to limit yourself to paste varieties - use what you love and you'll love what you get!

What zone are you in? Some tomatoes do very well in some zones and are duds in others.

Try Wessel's Purple Pride. Prolific and fairly disease resistant.

https://www.google.com/search?q=wessel%27s+purple+pride&espv=2&biw=1181&bih=591&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipsqKK4YTPAhVMlx4KHXVbCusQ_AUICCgD#imgrc=4qxSuAEVauDa4M%3A

Cindy

I obtained some seeds from the University of Florida this year that were hybrids of Brandywine designed for flavor not shipping. One was 'Garden Gem' which seems to be a paste tomato. It is very productive, seemingly disease free, and tastes better than any hybrid paste tomato I have grown before. It may become commercially available next year. Look for it.

I am growing Oregon Spring for the first time . Incredibly it is meaty with less juice and seeds. I think it is a good sauce/paste variety.

I am not big on canning but when I do I just use whatever I have available for making spaghetti sauce.

Sey

The reason I asked whether you figured out what the problem was is that you could easily switch varieties and still end up with disease. If it's something like early blight, some varieties may be more resistant, or you may switch varieties and get disease anyway. Or it could be a disease like septoria to which there is no variety developed for resistance or tolerance. Or it could be a soilborne disease which would be handled very well using hybrids bred specifically to resist them, whereas switching to another open pollinated or heirloom variety would do you no good. Or it could have been a pest and not a disease, in which case, it's only very minimally about variety.

IMO, a key thing is to figure out what your problem is this year and prepare for it appropriately in subsequent years. For example, it may be a disease that can be controlled well by pre-emptive regular spraying of fungicide, in which case, if you like what you're growing this year for taste and how well it cans, you may just want to grow it again but spray preventively from day 1 of plant-out to ward it off longer so you can get a plentiful harvest. There are also practices like how you support plants in order to provide good airflow and spacing, etc. It may be due to a pest that can be controlled if you watch for them and catch them early.

As Dave points out, there's no perfect. It's about finding a combination of variety characteristics and cultural practices that work for you. IMO, it's unrealistic to expect perfect disease resistance from any variety. You also need to give plants an assist with your cultural practices, and to do that, you need to figure out what's going on in your garden in terms of prevalent disease and pest organisms.

i was actually told by my local extension that it was probably phosphorus deficiency. so maybe not blight after all. i did spray daconil from day one. i'm not sure how to distinguish between the blights you list though

Juliet. They're a smaller tomato, but very hardy and prolific. Also not prone to blossom end rot like many roma-types. They're not all that sweet, but great for cooking.

We make salsas and sauces out anything that we like and have on hand. We no longer target paste varieties solely for that application. It's like the old saying ..... "cook with a wine that you like to drink". The demand for meaty/paste type fruit is low in our area as well. We have to literally give them away in large boxes. Therefore, we no longer offer any paste varieties for sales. The "Roma" determinate variety has exhibited varying amounts of BER in our garden and we no longer grow it. Over the years, a few "paste" varieties that come to mind for our 6A garden conditions are: Opalka, Ropreco, Pozzano F1, San Marzano Redorta ..... but there are tons of others. We love 4th of July F1 for this application but that's just us! Like others have said, disease resistance is specific for your growing conditions.

Shell 6A