They have good flavor and texture for paste tomatoes, and I grew them for quite a few years here. I might be growing them still had I not found Heidi. The problem with Opalka vs. Heidi is that Opalka doesn't seem to care for our heat and production slows down a lot once we get hot---and sometimes that heat arrives in earliest June which stops the production far too early for me. Heidi, by contrast, shrugs off the heat and produces like mad. So, I guess it depends on how many tomatoes you want. We want lots of them for canning, and Heidi outproduces Opalka probably 4 to 1 in our heat, so for us the choice was clear. I didn't use Opalka for juice though---just for canned tomatoes or to make salsa for canning. They are not especially juicy--they are very meaty.

I grew them and crossed them off my list. They were recommended by a Minnesotan, so I think our climate wasn't great for them. Of course, I grew them in 2015, the year of the monsoon spring, so that could have been part of it. I also planted them in straw bales, so another reason they could have done poorly. I didn't make notes about WHY I didn't like it, but most likely it just didn't produce much that year. To be honest, few things DID do well that year. Maybe someone else has trialed them under better conditions.

I like them but they were not a big producer for me either. I also didn't like how wimpy the vine looked.

That's all I need to know.