The Great Tomato Taste-Off’s teenage years ended Saturday morning at the Peconic Land Trust’s Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, where, under sunny skies and a hint of fall in the air, 100 or so eager tasters assembled to rate this year’s crop. The down-home event, one of the few still around since the Springs Fisherman’s Fair disappeared, began in 1998 and will mark its 20th anniversary next year, having missed a few along the way thanks to Covid, early-onset tomato blight, or the absence of its chief organizer, Jane Weissman.
Forty-four varieties, arranged on long tables according to their color (red, pink, orange, yellow, purple, green) and/or use (slicing, cooking) were on offer. The tasters wandered among them, rating flavors as they went, from 5 down to 1, fantastic to feh. Some people attacked the tables with purpose, frowning, stabbing a second slice with their wooden toothpicks before deciding. Others, many with small children in tow, looked to be there for the fun and friendship.
At Gabriele Raacke’s pink-tomato table, Rose de Berne — with “rich sweetness, passed down amongst Mennonite groups in Wisconsin,” according to Weissman’s informative account of the candidates — was gone within half an hour. “There weren’t that many of them to start with,” Raacke said. The “potato-leafed” Tiffen Mennonite, de Berne’s close relative, was pronounced “tangy” by Noa Bendit-Shtull, a weekend guest at “my mom’s partner’s house here.”
At the cooking-tomato table, Orange Banana and Speckled Roman were getting good marks, but Fumarole was not. “Sour,” remarked one man. “You don’t like the name?” inquired Sue Petersen, the volunteer in charge. “Some people don’t.”
“People get turned away when they hear they’re for cooking,” she added. Her table did have mounds of slices going begging.
Speaking of slices, all the slicing tomatoes — from Big Beef, a local favorite, to the little-known Plate de Haiti, “brought to the States in 1793 by Creole refugees fleeing the Haitian slave revolt” and “flavorful when eaten fresh, even better in sauce” — have “suffered from the weather,” noted Kathy Masters of Springs, an event organizer. “This time of year, they want a lot of sun and a little rain, and they’ve been getting torrents.”
Susan Cole, who used to live in Amagansett, presided over the greens and purples. She was touting the Fat Rubies (“fabulous!”), but the winner at that table, for the moment, looked like it would be Paul Robeson — “a Russian variety,” according to Weissman, named for the great Black operatic singer and civil rights activist, whose U.S. passport was revoked during the McCarthy era after he was accused of being a Communist.
“Mmmm, I liked that!” enthused Lauren Lesser Waterman of Wainscott after trying a piece of Paul. “I was going to give it a four and a half, but I’ve upped it to a five!”
The Taste-Off winners were yet to be announced as of this writing, but no one will be surprised if Sungold, once again, comes out on top over all. The tangerine-orange cherry tomato has had close competition over the years from another in its category, Matt’s Wild Cherry, and both sweet little standouts can be found at farm stands all around town.
