Sunshine fruit: the Isle of Wight’s incredible tomatoes

While sustainability is obviously very important, since about 2005 The Tomato Stall’s main focus has been on developing different varieties of tomatoes. ‘If you go back 100 years to Victorian times, gardens would contain thirty or forty types of tomatoes, but then World War Two happened and it was all about rationing, yields and standardisation, so everyone started growing the boring salad tomato,’ says Paul. ‘It happened across the board – carrots suddenly became big and orange and cheesemakers focused solely on ‘Government Cheddar’ – but now we’re rediscovering and demanding more unusual, unique varieties. Some of our tomatoes have been developed over twenty years, and now we’ve got some that taste like apricots or gooseberries. It’s a really exciting time as people are appreciating simpler cooking with the best ingredients. If you want to make a tomato and mozzarella salad, you need the best tomatoes, the best cheese and some fantastic oil. If you can get your hands on them, then that salad will taste better than anything more complicated made with poorer quality ingredients.’

The final piece of the puzzle that makes Isle of Wight Tomatoes so good is their location. While any tomato grower could utilise the latest technology and make the most of natural, sustainable methods to improve their tomatoes, they wouldn’t be able to match The Tomato Stall’s fruits. That’s because they either wouldn’t get enough sun in the UK, or because they would need to be transported for miles if coming from a sunnier country like Spain or Italy.

‘We have more sunshine on the Isle of Wight than any other part of the UK, and because we’re a small island that light is intensified by the sea,’ explains Paul. ‘We’re also able to pick the tomatoes when they’re perfectly ripe, rather than picking them early and letting them develop their colour in a cold truck for a few days, which is what happens with tomatoes from mainland Europe. Once you pick a tomato it stops developing flavour, so it’s important to pick it as late as possible but before it swells and starts to split.’

Plenty of sunshine, incredible glasshouses, a sustainable approach to growing, an incredible number of different varieties and a very short time from being picked to sitting on shop shelves – that’s what makes Isle of Wight tomatoes the best you can get in the UK. There’s just one more thing you need to do when you get them home. ‘Don’t keep tomatoes in the fridge – the cold kills the flavour and destroys the natural sugars,’ says Paul. ‘Keep them in the fruit bowl instead – after all, they are a fruit!’