What's your favorite variety with old-fashioned taste?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by zipcode

It's definitely the real deal. Yes, the fruit does fall off.
Also it does have gold speckling, as I've seen many times mentioned in this forum (by Carolyn for example). I think it's described as white, which is possible, I haven't grown it in a few years, my memory might be playing tricks.
As for the colour, it's lighter than other pink varieties to my eyes, including my false EPB, or Gregori's Altai, but I guess this might depend on growing conditions as well.

OK, let me step in here.

EPB was a family heirloom of Joe Bratka, one of the few along with Marizol Purple and Marizol Gold, all the others he bred himself and passed them off as family heirlooms which they were not.

And let's not confuse what Joe bred with what his father bred, such as Red barn, Great Divide, box Car Willie, etc.

I convinced Joe to join SSE and in the 1992 SSE YEarbook we both listed EPB and my original seeds were from joe and I've grown it many times in the intervening years for new stock for SSE listings as well as for seed offers I've done over the years.

What EPB has is white stippling on the surface, I've never seen gold flecking on it ever. And very similar to it is Redfield Beauty which also has white stippling on the surface, and yes, ripe fruit fall from that one just as they do for EPB.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Eva_Purple_Ball

IT's hard to see the stippling in photographs and I have to correct myself since Joe and I introduced it in 1991.

For some reason Tania doesn't list Redfield BEauty so I had to Google it and here's that link.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q...+beauty+tomato

Supposedly from the Livingston Seed CO in 1885.

There are some who have wondered if EPB and Redfield are the same, but I don't think so, I've grown both and they are different with regard to taste and there's another reason why I do think that EPB was a family heirloom of Joe's.

One of my students was German, and I admit I was always trying to get family heirlooms from some of them as well as the faculty, and since Joe's family was from Germany I asked this student if she had ever heard of a Marizol place in the black Forest where Joe had said his family lived.

She ASAP said that Marizol was a shortened form of the place called Maria's Zell, which means Maria's village or town which was in the Black Forest.

I rest my case.

Carolyn