Cuostralee growout results

[Lee]

This year, I made a request for folks to send me their seeds
of the variety Cuostralee. It's been my favorite since I first
grew it in 2002. My source was Chuck Wyatt.
I wanted to see if different sources grew out to be as good
as what I've tasted from mine.
So, with quite a few generous donations, I was able to grow
out Cuostralee from 6 different seed sources.
And here's the results of my growout!

The seed sources are as follows:
Heirloom Seeds
Marianne Jones
(KYGreg's saved version)
Mine saved in 2003
Suze's saved from TGS
Tatiana

These are shown in order in the first photo.
A couple things you will notice. They are all approximately
the same shape and size. The variability is consistent with
expected variations.
However, you'll notice the first one (from Heirloom Seeds) is
Pink instead of red.

The next 6 pictures show the interiors of each of the tomatoes.
The order is HS, MJ, KYG, Suze, Tatiana, Mine.

Other than MJ's they all look very similar in being meaty and
juicy.

Now, as for taste... this was the most remarkable part of all.
They all tasted DIFFERENT! Even the three that were grown
side by side in the same soil, with the same sun, and same
amount of water.
My favorite was mine of course, but not all season long.
The one from Tatiana's was better tasting some days, and
was the preferred in head to head comparisons with mine and Suze's. Suze's had a pithy texture/dry taste to it, which
was quite surprising. However, Suze's was the productivity
winner, with mine coming in second to Tatiana's.
They were all some of the most productive in the garden.


So, what's my conclusion?
I have none... other than I'm pretty happy with my version of
Cuostralee. The other's were close. And while they sometimes
tasted better than mine, they were never better than when
mine tastes its best. Perhaps next year I will get some seed from the original French source.... hint, hint!

Lee