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Posts Tagged ‘Vintage Wine Tomato’

Ripe Vintage Wine Beefsteak Heirloom Tomato in DoT's Hand 14 July 2009

DoT’s Thot: What’s in a name?  It appears that this tomato was well-named.  I bought it because Vintage Wine Beefsteak had a nice ring to it; my friends can remember this tomato by name, and it performed well.

Vintage Wine Beefsteak Heirloom Tomato Has Performed Well in 2009

This tomato has produced many fruits and yields very pretty, truly striped tomatoes.  When I gave some tomatoes away, I had very positive feedback.

I did have to net the tomatoes in July, because the birds realized what a great find the tomato rows were.  I also had some critter attacks on ripening fruit — we have lots of trees in our city and I have seen an occasional coyote, a raccoon, and several opossums. My neighbor’s dog had a run-in with a skunk, though I never saw it; I did smell it.  Of course, we battle gophers and an occasional ground squirrel.

Vintage Wine Beefsteak Heirloom Tomato Plant with Green Tomatoes - 13 June 2009

Vintage Wine Beefsteak Heirloom Tomato Ripening on the Vine 25 June 2009

Description of Vintage Wine Beefsteak Heirloom Tomato Plant

This is a potato leaf indeterminate (I) tomatoplant recently introduced.  It is a bicolor tomato which was listed as 85 days to maturity.  It is considered somewhat rare, because of the unique striping of the fruit.  Bought in early March, the plants (only variety that got duplicated) were in the ground no more than 2 weeks later.  By mid-June there were many green tomatoes on the plants.  By the end of June we were eating ripe tomatoes.

The plants produced an abundance of succulent tomatoes throughout July.  So far, we have harvested at least 25 pounds of Vintage Wine heirloom tomatoes. Read the rest of this entry »

“All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.”   – Friedrich Nietzsche (German classical Scholar, Philosopher and Critic of culture, 1844-1900.)

Vintage Wine Heirloom Tomato and Black Brandywine Heirloom Tomato

DoT’s Thot: I have struggled with deciding what should go in the garden each tomato season.  I admit to being greedily curious about heirloom tomatoes.  While I am all in favor of preserving the diversity of the horticultural gene pool, I also am just plain interested in the colors, shapes, sizes, aroma, and tastes of the varieties of tomatoes as well as the growing habits, different flowers and vining habits of the tomato plants.  Vintage Wine attracted me this year, because of its name, description, and pretty picture.  Black Brandywine was bought, because I somehow did not find the usual pink nor yellow brandywine in the nurseries.

Select Heirloom Tomatoes Because They Are Interesting and Taste Good

As for selecting tomatoes in general, not being a trained horticulturist, I do some reading, internet surfing, and take my chances every year, trying to find the ones I have liked from years past and trying new ones.  Vintage Wine tomato and Black Brandywine tomato are two new heirloom trials for me.  Some of the ones I have missed this year that were grand in past years have been New Zealand Pink Paste (grew that for 2 years and then it disappeared on me — nice paste tomato that tastes grand out of hand), Anna Russian (prolific lovely pink oxheart tomatoes that remind me a little of Dinner Plate — planted that last year, found none this year), and Orange Santa Grape tomato (wonderful for growing in super large pot).  I did note that there is some dispute about which tomatoes are truly heirloom or heritage, but it does not matter to me.  I will take the broader definition to be tomatoes that people like so much that they keep the seeds, wish to see them propagated forward, and pass on from some number of generations to the next.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”
– Alice May Brock (of Alice’s Restaurant fame)

Eight Pounds of Garden Fresh Tomatoes Made Twenty Cups of Salsa

Dot’s Thot: I guess then, tomatoes, onions, Jalepeno peppers, and cilantro make it Mexican.  Garlic certainly does make this good.  Anyway, today I decided I couldn’t let the tomatoes stand — having given away several dozen tomatoes already and eating them at least for lunch and dinner and sometimes for breakfast — yum!!

Having made Caprese salad, guacamole, salsa, and eaten them with plain old salt and pepper, I decided to make the first batch of salsa to bottle and save for later.  Last year was my trial run — only made a bit, and found that we all liked it.  Hence today was salsa batch #1.  Last year I made and canned salsa, marinara sauce, and some Indian tomato sabzi.  I also skinned and froze a bunch of tomatoes too.

I am not going to tell you how to can tomatoes, because I am still only an occasional canner — there are better sources for that.  I will review for you what was used and what happened.  If you do can tomatoes, you will probably find, as I have, if you use your own tomatoes and mix them up, the batches may come out differently each time, but no commercially uniform tomatoes will taste quite as good as your own mix of delightful special, vine-ripened tomatoes.

Here is the list of tomatoes that went into the salsa today:

• (1) Lemon Boy — 4 oz.
• (1) Black Brandywine — 6 oz
• (2) Marizol Purple — 6 oz. + 8.5 oz.
• (1) Earl of Edgecombe — 5 oz.
• (1) Aunt Gertie’s Gold — 7 oz.
• (3) Vintage Wine — 4.5 oz.+3 oz. + 2 oz.
• (12) Salsa — 6+4+4+4+4+3+4+2+3.5+6+4+4+4 = 52.5 oz.
• (1) Golden Pineapple — 11 oz.
• (2) Celebrity — 4 oz.+3 oz.
• (1) Piriform = 9 oz.
• Miscellaneous small tomatoes = 8 oz.

If I added right, that is 133.5 oz. or 8.34 pounds of tomatoes or roughly 8 pounds of some very lovely tomatoes.  I did not make this with measurements on the other stuff, but what you see in the photo, all chopped up and mixed with salt and pepper became the salsa.  The four Jalepeno peppers (green) were pretty hot and the long red peppers (grew in the yard) are kind of hot.  I don’t favor bell peppers in salsa, nor cucumbers (in a canning book).

I like to mix the onions when I can, so used one large yellow and 1 large red onion.  I used a whole head of garlic (I like garlic, kim chee, and Korean food — what can I say).  I also like green onions in my salsa, so used a whole bunch.  I used one large bunch of cilantro and this time used 2 large, extremely juicy limes, although lemons work well also.  The rest was salt and pepper to taste.

Finally I followed the canning directions for water bath canning.  The result was seven pint jars and four 12 oz. jars of salsa batch #1.  If you multiply that out 7X16=112 and 4X12=48 or 160 ounces or 10 pounds or 20 cups of salsa.  The jars are cooling (and hopefully all sealing nicely) on the washer top.  Tomorrow, I will check the jars, label them and put them away as I go to the next tomato projects.

Aloha, Dot

P.S.  If you want to try to identify the varieties, I can tell you this much:  Piriform is on the scale.  The 4 yelowish tomatoes in the photo are Golden Pineapple on the top, Lemon Boy to the right, Earl of Edgecombe bottom, and Aunt Gertie’s Gold on the left.  On the top left between Golden Pineapple and Aunt Gertie’s Gold is the finely striped Vintage Wine (which this season is one of my favorite tomatoes in taste).  Right below Aunt Gertie’s Gold is a Black Brandywine, To its right is an arc of various sizes of the Salsa tomato (a mother lode of tomatoes this year — firm, prolific, great in salsa).  Sort of nestled in the center is Marizol Purple with a small Celebrity tomato to its left.  As for the rest, your guess is as good as mine now.

Related Posts:

• Grow Tomatoes Review: Sugar Lump Cherry Heirloom
• Tomato Gardening Journal — Review of May 2009
• Grow Tomatoes Review:  Orange Santa Grape
• First Tomato of 2009 — Pink Thai Egg
• See Christy K.’s Beautiful Brandywine Tomato — two hands needed