So I am growing alot of tomatoes this year. I have like 40+ plants so I have been able to pick alot of tomatoes and see trends.
One thing I have noticed is that if I pick the fruits too early they are tart and lack sweetness and depth of flavor. If I pick them too late they loose their acid and become flabby. The Parallel to grapes and the resulting wine has been pretty interesting to me.
The analogy goes a bit further in that the tomatoes that are picked at optimal ripeness are delicious by themselves and are as good as it gets but the ones pick too early need some sort of vinaigrette with added sweetness while the ones picked too late need a nice tart vinaigrette be be tasty. In either case of tomato manipulation the result is not as good as the one picked at the right time.
This has been a bad tomato vintage for me in SoCal. I think we planted earlier and they’re ripening earlier. And it’s rarely been higher than 80 degrees all summer. It’s a bad situation all around–limited flavor development, mealy texture, and low acid and low sugar. I’m hoping there’s some heat coming up to help the rest of the tomatoes get over the hump!
Last year’s crop that matured in September heat were way better.
Or maybe I should have buried a manure cow horn, dry farmed them and harvested on the full moon.
We only have a couple of plants, so it’s no big deal. I’ve decided these are good blending tomatoes. Put 'em in salsa or tomato sauce, and they’re fine. They’re not so good as “varietal” tomatoes in caprese. Classic vintage indeed!
Last year we had a mess of Roma tomatoes that were ill-suited for our “terroir” so at least we learned from that experience. They still made pretty good sauce in the end.
If we get a tomato RO machine, we should be able to manage a tomato vintage of the century in most years!
Man…when will it all stop…now folks are manipulating their…tomatoes. What’s next??..oak…reverse osmosis…??
I envy you folks on being able to grow tomatoes that have flavor. Here in LosAlamos, at 7,000’ altitude; it’s damnably tough
to get our tomatoes to ripen.
But you’re dead right, Berry. A tomatoe picked at “physiological ripeness” cannot be beaten.
Tom
I’ve been using that exact metaphor in my Into to Wine seminars for many years. I also talk about putting tomatoes in cooler vs warmer places and the effect on the acid and sugar and relate it to cool and warm climate wine making.
Excellent topic, and one I’ve often thought about, comparing wine grapes to other fruits and vegetables. I actually wonder if all of the food we eat is for all intents and purposes the analog of central valley Zin
Going through your exact situation here (though with only a couple of plants). One difference with tomatoes is that they ripen individually, at different times, while (most) grape varieties ripen at roughly the same time (at least on the same plant, and mostly in the same vineyard block).
Well, commercial produce tends to be bred and maintained for a single (or narrow) harvest. Determinant tomato varieties produce in a narrow window. With a lot of garden plants of the same type you don’t want that. Depends if you’re eating fresh or canning (or whatever).
A couple things to remember with grapes. They continue to send out secondary clusters, and if you don’t maintain a narrow fruit zone, the ripening of the primary clusters won’t be even (higher up being riper and lower down less ripe). So it does take manipulation to have all the fruit ripen at the same time.
Berry, at first I thought you were talking about 2004 red Burgundy:) Seriously, the 2004 l"Arlot les Suchots was the only wine I ever remember that was tomato-ish. ((I kinda liked it too.))
Great topic Berry. I’ve been thinking about this as well. Had to trim off some extra clusters as they were on poor branches, figured it would rob nutrients from the other vegetal growth. They seem to grow well out here. The heirloom types are amazing here. Wish I knew the names of them. You cut them, and there are say 20-30 holes through the flesh, quite beautiful and tasty.
I used to use an analogy with apples. Pick and eat too soon and you get a mouthful of acid. When ripe some are soft and uninteresting (Red Delicious); others crisp and lively (Gravenstein).
This is an interesting comparison. I posted this in cellar rats, but a produce farmer of thirty years, who grows high end organic produce for farmers markets and restaurants was commenting on how he hadn’t seen such perfect conditions in many, many years, with days in the high 80’s to low 90’s and cool 50 mornings. He said that the skins were thick and glistening with resin because of the heat, and the nights/mornings are cool, so the tomatoes were maintaining great acidity and were ripening slowly an evenly- the whole time I’m sitting there thinking about the grapes and just smiling at him, nodding.
I have also noticed how incredible the blackberries are this year. They’re an extremely invasive weed around here and are everywhere. With all of the extra rain this spring and the warm even temps. they have ripened very slowly and have intense flavor, with great acid/sugar balance. I actually considered making some wine out of them, as there are so plentiful and high quality this year, but there are just too many other projects on the list.
Hope this fall shapes up nicely!
Tomatoes really do like the heat- I grew them for a living for 10+ years
I remember when sungolds first came out- people went berserko over them.We couldn’t grow enough of them. People would pick one out of the basket and smell them and go crazy over the resinous smell an the tropical sweet, acidic flavor. Herlooms are fun too.
