More Than Tomato-Skin Deep

A tomato guru like Dr. Paul Shoemaker must prepare for tomato trends like what’s happening with the Cherokee Purple. Photo by Tim Robison

Growers liken the Cherokee Purple to a leg bruise, and it’s an apt (if not particularly appetizing) description of the popular tomato. “They’ve got a red, black, and purple look to them,” explains Dr. Paul Shoemaker, a vegetable pathologist living in Mills River. “They sure are ugly and knobby.” Still, Shoemaker knows not to judge a ’mater by its skin, especially when he’s crunching numbers for his business, Holly Spring Farm.

Holly Spring sells 30 tomato varieties, including offbeat cultivars such as Mr. Stripey and Green Zebra. All sit differently on the palate, but none quite like a Cherokee Purple. The tomato was first grown in the Tennessee River Valley by Native Americans, and the seeds got passed down for generations until Craig LeHoullier, a retired chemist and tomato fiend from Raleigh, got his hands on some in 1990. They entered the Seed Saver Exchange yearbook soon after.

Today, Cherokees are Shoemaker’s bestselling heirloom. Customers at the Flat Rock tailgate market and Mills River farmers’ market can’t get enough of the sweet, tangy fruit. But as Ashley Epling explains, this demand is unusual. Unlike the love shown to various apple cultivars, for instance, folks don’t usually covet one tomato type over another. More often than not, they just consume whatever is readily available at the grocery. (Or worse, they lack access to fresh produce altogether.)

Photo by Tim Robison

Epling is president of Slow Food Asheville, an organization that works to preserve Western North Carolina’s food culture through connecting farmers and consumers. Each year, they select an heirloom variety to grow, eat, save, and promote as part of their Heritage Food Project. This year, the Cherokee Purple trumped two paste tomatoes, Amish Paste and Opalka; a pleated red called Zapotec; and a huge beefsteak known as the Mortgage Lifter (called such because a gardener sold enough to pay off his house in the 1930s).

Slow Food’s aim is to preserve varieties that are being phased out for more durable crossbreeds. They do this by giving away more than 1,700 seedlings — donated by Banner Greenhouses — providing tomato care support, and hosting an end-of-season seed swap.

Chefs are certainly helping that process along, too. The tomatoes growing on Epling’s Horse Shoe holding, Epling Farm, will go to the Hendersonville Community Co-Op to be sold as is or prepared in the deli. Come summer, Shoemaker will also start delivering 200 to 400 pounds of heirlooms to Sierra Nevada Brewery each week.

They’ll land in conventional places: salad, soup, and pasta. But restaurants are getting creative, says Shoemaker, making savory tomato crème brûlée or bacon Bloody Marys. Perhaps foodies know that saving traditional fare means appealing to modern sensibilities.

“We want to keep these treasured foods in the marketplace and our plates,” says Epling. The tomato of the year might look unglamorous, but it’s definitely going places.

For information about events sponsored by Slow Food Asheville, see slowfoodasheville.com.

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