Winning Tomato Was Yellow

"You say tomayto, I say tomahto."

"Who would have thought tomatoes could taste so different?"

"I'm a tomato lover, so it tastes good no matter."

"These Cherokee Purple are meant to look like this? I always thought there was something wrong with them!"

These were the sort of lyrical comments emanating from behind the tomato patch of Quail Hill, the organic farm cooperative in Amagansett, on Saturday, at its first Great Tomato Taste-Off.

Sultry And Slow

The setting: hot sun and warm, springy earth, the smell of ripe tomatoes, and, behind the vegetable patches, rows and rows of pastel flowers stretching into the distance, except for the very yellow, towering sunflowers bringing up the rear.

The pace was slow, rare in what is now officially known as "the Hamptons." There was no pushing, no shoving, no impatient waiting in line. There was smiling and talking to strangers: "What did you think of that one?" one asked another.

It was the way things were here before every event had its own T-shirt or goody bag full of products from corporate sponsors.

Twenty-One Varieties

All 23 varieties of tomatoes grown at Quail Hill this year - cherry, standard, and paste varieties, red, purple, and orange, heirlooms and not - were meant to be sampled.

But when it came down to picking them early Saturday morning, one (Marizol Gold) was not ready for harvest, while another (Eva Purple Ball) couldn't be found among the rows of its ripe-to-bursting competitors.

With some tasters working in pairs, 77 opinion forms were filled out by the end of the three-hour event (appropriately, the judges leaned on cutting boards to fill out their rankings, ranging from a score of one for "ugh!" to seven for "the best!"), most by members of Quail Hill but some by intrigued community folk.

The Top Tomato

The tomatoes were cleaned and, in the case of the larger ones, cut in chunks and set out on their own paper plates with a label identifying the variety. Amid a sea of tomato skin, flesh, and seeds on the red-and-white-cloth-covered tables, water and bread were provided for the judges to cleanse their palates between samples of the different fruits.

When the results were tallied, one was clearly the top tomato: the Sungold cherry, a bright, tangerine-colored specimen with optimal sweetness and minimal acidity. It garnered an average score of 6.0, and 37 perfect 7.0 ratings.

In second place came Matt's Wild Cherry, tiny sweet red things, with an average score of 5.7. The Glacier, a red standard that garnered a 5.3 average, took third, and Brandywine, a red-fleshed globe with deep pink skin that can fatten up to one pound, earned a score of 4.8, for fourth place.

Other ranking tomatoes were: the Persimmon, an orange standard, with 4.7; Valencia, another orange standard, with 4.6; Firebird, a red standard, with 4.4; Tommy Toes, apricot-sized cherries, with 4.4, Muskvich, a red standard, with 4.1, and Cherokee Purple, a purple standard originally cultivated by the Cherokee Indians 100 years ago, which truly looks purplish-brownish on the outside.

Other, lower-ranked varieties had, at the very least, interesting names, including the mortgage lifter, the whippersnapper, the Fourth of July, the silvery fir tree, and the Cosmonaut Volkov.

Cherokee Purple

One taster was overheard wondering, "Now that I know what I like, where do I find them?" Alas, plucking tomatoes from the rows is a privilege for Quail Hill members only.

The results of this year's Great Tomato Taste-Off will help members decide what to plant next season. One volunteer with the farm, Jean Weissman, said she thought nonmembers who came to Saturday's event may have caught the tomato bug, and may want to sign on.

After all, this is the farm where the corn and cucumbers served at last month's Democratic fund-raiser at the Baldwin-Basinger house were harvested. Prepared by Nick and Toni's retaurant, which owns shares in the cooperative farm, the corn was one of 10 varieties grown at Quail Hill.

But the only one served is called Kiss and Tell. Really.

MICHELLE NAPOLI