Cherokee Purple Tomato

Cherokee Purple slices open a deep brick red with green-shouldered marbling and tastes like a tomato remembering an older summer — low acid, almost winey, with a finish that lingers. Fruits run 10 to 12 ounces on indeterminate vines that will happily climb past six feet if you give them something to hold. Stake or cage early; the plants get heavy fast once fruit sets. Best picked at the moment the shoulders soften, not before.

Where it comes from. Passed down through Tennessee growers and credited to the Cherokee people.