I have a very short list of tomatoes I will grow now.
Big Beef
Sun Gold
Brandwine
Big Beef and Sungold are real producers and often produce all summer and continue to first frost.
Brandywine are simply delicious… but low producers for me… got to have a few each summer.
TNHunter
Cavocado, be careful who you read info from. Camochef is a person who had grown maybe 50 varieties of tomato and began to loudly tout the “best” tomato in existence. I don’t have an issue with a person saying they really like a tomato’s flavor. I have a serious problem when that variety happens to be a run of the mill average flavor tomato that is really not that good and yet it gets ballyhooed into the stratosphere. It is misleading to others who would gladly grow some better flavored tomatoes but get diverted off to grow mediocre tomatoes instead.
Camochef found Cowlick’s Brandywine as a single plant of Brandywine he purchased from a local store. He described it as - much better flavored and much more productive than ordinary Brandywine (Sudduth). I’ve grown Cowlicks a dozen times over the last 15 years. It is simply a normal Brandywine. It is a relatively sweet pink potato leaf tomato as is typical of pink varieties.
I’ve grown about 3000 tomato varieties and can usually describe from memory what a given variety will taste like and how much it will produce as grown in my garden. Perhaps more important, I’ve learned which varieties will produce in a given climate and which are likely to disappoint. For example, Black Sea Man is a beautiful tomato and it tastes pretty good. But it is a fungal disease magnet that dies after maturing 3 or 4 fruit when grown here in the southeast. Grow it in a very dry climate and voila it is productive and tasty.
Using your experience as an example, Early Girl is a relatively good flavored and early maturing variety that is mediocre or worse in my climate. In your climate which is dryer and not quite as hot in the summer, Early Girl is an exceptionally good producer of good flavored tomatoes.
If a person wants to learn about tomato flavors and begin to understand variety differences, grow these.
Goose Creek - a small pink very tart tomato
Lynnwood - rich balanced flavor in a medium size red tomato
Akers West Virginia - A very intense rich flavored red tomato
Daniels - Arguably the best flavored and most productive pink slicer I’ve grown
Prudens Purple - pink slicer, nuanced flavor slightly different from most pinks
Smoky Mountain Red - only “sour” tomato I’ve grown, smells like dirty socks
KBX - Orange, knock you over good flavor, very productive.
Bear Creek - top of the line good black tomato
Aunt Ruby’s German Green - sweet spicy flavor that some people can’t get enough of
Yoders German Yellow - Yellow tomatoes tend to be bland, YGY has tomato flavor!
Sutton White - I’ve never found a truly good white tomato, but Sutton comes very close
That Two Tasty tomato looks tasty. I normally like to grow a few paste tomatoes. Last year I grew one called Romeo a friend gave me seeds from that were like 8yo I believe. This year just San Marzano. I love the big heirloom pasties though.
I forgot about the Black from Tula and Black Sea Man both are highly praised by many that grow them I will try one day.
Also guess I can mention my most hated mater. I have a very hard palate when it comes to tomatoes. I never even liked them besides in salsas or sauces before I started growing them. My first homegrown Brandywine was an amazing experience! Store bought tomatoes are absolute garbage and discusting to me. So, Early Girl wins this title hands down. Yeah it’s early and very productive but i hated them. It takes a special quality for a tomato for me to like them. I wouldn’t even share Early Girl with my neighbors or make salsa or sauce with them. 
I’d like to pick your memory in that case. About how big should I expect Sungold to get? I’ve got two I’m planting up against a 16 ft hog panel, not sure if I should expect to have room on there for anything else.
Out of curiosity, are there vegetables other than tomatoes that you’re this picky about? I don’t mean picky in a negative way, just don’t have another good word to use and asking “are your tastes so discerning with other vegetables” sounds a little archaic haha
I’m easy on some veggies but most food in general even a certified Master Chef at Culinary school was very intrigued always asking my opinion first but respected by judgment as well as everyone I know. I have been very picky my entire life and have the most sensitive tongue and can definitely taste things others can’t. It’s a blessing and a curse.
A_Vivaldi, you are a glutton for punishment. Sungold vines in good soil can grow 65 feet long. If you have 2 on a 16ft panel, it will fill up and then some. Be sure to feed them very well. I give each Sungold plant 20 pounds of chicken manure to feed on.
Plants, welcome to the club. I’m a super taster and Craig Lehoullier is a super taster. I’ve only met one or two others who can taste the nuances in tomato flavor. It has negatives. Many smells and tastes others enjoy are overwhelming to me. Most women’s perfume for example makes me gag.
My wife likes to make sauces and add tomatoes in salads so we have typically grown a plum tomato and cherry tomato. This year it is San Marzano and Canary Kiss (Wild Boar Farms). I would like to grow a slicer tomato as well but I’m quickly running out of garden space with all my berry plants.
10-4, sounds like one will be more than enough for a panel (or two). They generally make it through southeastern summers without decline, yes?
I’ll give the second plant to one of my siblings.
man so true. Darrel, At least we don’t get sick as much because we can taste and smell anything off.
Man, I guess I should start adding extra manure just to see how large I could get Sungold to go. Normally I only use miracle grow and still end up with this:
Bwaaa HAAAA Haaaaa, Mua haaa haaa, rotflmao! You have never seen a well fed Sungold.
Seriously, it is one of the most vigorous and aggressive plants around.
Hi there!
I am by no means an expert but I just wanted to share my experience from last season.
I tried a lot of different tomatoes last year and I did not get an early enough start, but somehow we still managed to enjoy some stump of the world tomatoes. They have a very unusual flavor, we like them. I don’t know if I can describe it right now, but I am growing them again this year and I will try to figure out what flavors I am tasting, but I’ve never had a tomato like it.
Maybe ask Darrel for his input on the flavor profile, he’s a tomato expert.
Bonnie best also gave us good tomatoes.
And lastly, we did get to enjoy super sweet 100s. Those tomatoes are so good. You don’t even need salt. They have a savory type flavor. I wish they were not hybrid, but I still buy seeds because we love them so much.
One plant that did very well healthwise and was loaded with fruit was black strawberry cherry tomato. We got seeds from Baker Creek. Productive, beautiful to look at disease free yet somehow the worst tomatoes I’ve ever had. I tried them two years in a row because I couldn’t believe something that looked that good was so awful. Thick skin, mealy and lacking flavor. Never again.
Galina yellow cherry was the first to sprout, but we never got to try them because spring frost killed the young seedlings. I’m trying those again this year hoping to get to taste one.
I’m super excited about Heidi, I’m trying it this year at fusion powers recommendation. We tend to get blossom end rot, and Heidi is not known for that so I am hopeful. I want them for canning and on pizza with fresh mozzarella with a little pesto on top.
Also trying Bloody Butcher, but I got the wrong one from Burpee and Sandhill does not have seeds for 2025 so I am going to try out the Burpee version to see what we end up with.
I hope you end up with some wonderful tomatoes this season! I adore tomatoes, I have been eating tomato sandwiches since a teenager. Who needs anything else on a sandwich, if you have a tasty tomato you’re good to go! On sourdough please! 
I plant Celebrity as my main tomato. Usually Early Girl and Big Boy.
This year decuded to try some new to me varieties. Simplicity, Fantom, Little Margo, Steller, Rubie. I also have planted Mountain Fresh, Sun Gold and Better Boy.
I would encourage you to try Black cherry. It is very productive and delicious.
Was just at one of the local nurseries and noticed they were selling this:
I don’t know it but can tell you it is probably exactly as described. Early Girl is a 2 way hybrid of a good flavored line crossed with another line that has better disease tolerance. It is very easy to stabilize such a cross. I have seed of stabilized Ramapo and stabilized Big Beef which for all intents and purposes are as good as the F1. Why? Tomatoes are natural inbreeders that self-pollinate about 98% of the time. As a result, the tomato genome is very stable which means you can easily stabilize just about any cross.
Where can it go wrong? Often, linkage will be an issue where one specific gene is on a chromosome in a position where it rarely crosses over. Unfortunately, disease tolerance genes are often in linkage which means you may get all the other good traits but be unable to incorporate the disease tolerance gene.
Interesting, I wonder how the stabilized Early Girl ended up as a potato leaf instead of regular leaf like the original.
Also, since you recommend Daniels so much, I was curious why Daniel Burson wasn’t mentioned in your list of good black/purple tomatoes. I would hope that crossing Daniels with Indian Stripe retained some of Daniels good qualities. Anyways, I ask because I’ve been having trouble finding seeds for Daniels and Bear Creek, but I have found them for Daniel Burson.
Oooh, I just looked this one up. A cherry tomato with a “smoky” flavor does sound good. Now you have me imagining a bite-sized Cherokee Purple.
As far as paste goes we’ve grown Amish paste and opalka. Amish paste is good, favorite of lots of people. Opalka is a good tomato too. Horn shaped and pretty productive, nice yellow streaks on red skin. I’ve settled on these two for processing, Amish paste tend to be bigger than opalka but opalka may have less juice. Both have good flavor, but then again I’m not a tomato connoisseur. I just grow what produces well, and that my wife has the easiest time processing. We eat a lot of them, seems like most of her recipes start with “a whole onion, chopped and sauteed, and a clove of garlic” and are finished with “a quarter pint of tomato paste.”
Opalka is one of my favorite tomatoes but it should not be smaller than Amish Paste nor should it be dry. Opalka can weigh up to a pound in optimal conditions.
I tend to grow dense meaty tomatoes to make sauce. Heidi is hard to beat with wide adaptation, heavy production, and very good flavor when made into sauce/paste. I usually add some Opalka to the mix because it is sweeter than Heidi. Martino’s Roma is another often grown by me paste.
Bill Jeffers enjoyed crossing good flavored tomatoes to see what would show up. Daniel Burson was one he either found from a bee made cross or from his efforts making crosses. I got seed from him maybe 15 years ago along with 2 or 3 others such as Eva St. Wendel. Long story short, I prefer pink tomatoes with balanced flavor so Daniel Burson as a dark fruited variety just never quite hit my palate right.
