Thank you this is most interesting, I personally like the acidy sharp tasting tomatoes.

You're welcome. I like them too. I also like sweet tomatoes. I try to grow some of the sweet ones and some of the acidy, sharp-tasting ones every year so we have lots of variety.

I think I agree with Dawn's dad. Most of the time, the tomatoes which really catch my attention have that sharp, old fashioned taste. Though, many people prefer the sweeter ones. Several times, someone at work has brought in Cherokee Purple and offered slices. I always try it (again) and think, "Well, it's a tomato...."

I've come to the conclusion that "the best tomato flavor" truly is subjective, depending on taste. I may yet try some of Livingston's tomatoes. Dawn does such a great job describing them. Dawn, you should ask for a sales commission!

George

I like a sweet tomato occasionally, I like the Bradley, Arkansas Traveler & Ozark Pink tomatoes which to me are sweet but I like the Cherokee Purple because it has enough acid to make it taste good. The inside color causes a kind of back up and look moment, I can not talk my wife into trying it. But I must say that I like the Baker Family Heirloom best of any tomato that I have tasted in years because it has more of an acidy taste that just taste good, like a ripe tomato should taste. I also can tomato juice and the more acid tasting tomatoes make a better flavored juice, or at least to me.

George, Back in the early to mid-2000s when I was trialing hundreds of tomato varieties a year in a fast-track effort to find the ones we liked the best, I found that the Livingston tomato varieties took me back to my childhood when, really, I think all the tomatoes my dad, uncles and grandparents grew were those old-fashioned tangy tomatoes. I was so excited to find them in the 2000s, even if they might not have been the exact varieties we grew in the 1960s. I suspect I grew up mostly eating heirloom types in the 1960s, though we didn't really call them that back then---we just called them tomatoes. Now, when I see tomatoes like Ramapo and Moreton (or any others) described as Jersey tomatoes, I know those too, will have that old-fashioned flavor. By the 1980s or 1990s, it seems like the sweeter flavors were taking over in the commercial breeding world, a trend that mostly continues to this day, and that has given me even more of an appreciation for the wide variety of Livingston tomatoes still available from places like Victory Seeds. The older I get, the more I prefer the taste of the old heirloom//OP types even when compared to the newer OP types that have been bred more recently. Keith Mueller's stabilized crosses (Gary O Sena, Dora, Liz Birt) also have that old-fashioned flavor I love, but perhaps with a hint more sweetness. Well, Gary O Sena definitely has the sweetness from its parents and so does Dora, but Liz Birt definitely has a tanginess to it. I love tangy tomatoes. Honestly, it is hard for me to say that there's any tomatoes I don't like, except for most modern-day hybrids. I don't mind saying how disappointing most of them are.

Authereray, I'm not surprised you love the tanginess of Baker Family Heirloom---and now you know why George's taste buds are so picky---because he's grown and eaten BFH for ages and ages and his taste buds are spoiled!

I don't have any ripe tomatoes in the house today, except for some bite-sized cherry and grape types, but I have lots of green ones that I hope to cover up and get through this weekend's cold nights so that we'll get some more ripe ones before the tomato season ends. All this talk of different tomatoes has my mind thinking ahead to my grow list for 2018. I need to get working on that.

Dawn

Okiedawn,

That's my problem I've been trying to plan what tomatoes I want to plant next year all summer. Right now I'm thinking Baker Family Heirloom, Stone, Cherokee Purple and maybe Prudence Purple.