Scent of a tomato

The complexities of the wines of Napa and Bordeaux are no match for Ann Noble's nose. In seconds, she can discern notes of raspberry from blackberry, parse licorice from clove, green grass from hay.

The humble tomato from the local farmers market, however, has proved more of a puzzle.

Noble, a retired University of California, Davis, food scientist, travels the planet teaching people to listen to their noses. Her copyrighted Wine Aroma Wheel, used around the world, divides wine aromas into 90 distinct scents -- and those 90, she says, are only the most common.

In the middle of last summer, Noble got a call to sniff into something different: the tomato.

Georgeanne Brennan, an author and food consultant in Winters, was exploring the idea that local tomato growers might build the region's reputation as a source for fine tomatoes by borrowing a page from the premium wine business: Through tastings, give customers a way to appreciate subtleties of aroma and flavor and texture. Show them why Yolo's heirloom tomatoes are unique and special -- and worth a premium price.

Brennan got the idea to call Noble after talking with Thaddeus Barsotti, an organic farmer in Capay who wanted a better way to describe the subtleties of his dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes to shoppers at farmers markets.

For years, Barsotti said, he'd been stuck with crude generalities: the red ones are sweet, the yellow ones are a little less sweet.

"It was something to tell people," he said.

Noble agreed to give the tomato tasting a try, and on a late July evening last year on Barsotti's farm, she led 100 people in a wine-style "sensory analysis" of heirloom tomatoes. The event drew a review in the New York Times.

A sequel last month, held as part of a "Discover Yolo County" food and wine festival in Napa, sold out two weeks in advance. Soon after the first tasting in 2006, Brennan and consulting partner Ann Evans began work under a three-year, $360,000 contract from Yolo County to promote the uniqueness of the region's agriculture.

Yolo County, it seemed, was on the trail of a new gourmet gold mine.

For local farmers, the payoff from a growing class of tomato connoisseurs could be big.

"Our market is flavor," said Andrew Brait, a partner at Full Belly Farm in Guinda, one of several farms in the county that grow several hundred thousand pounds of heirlooms annually. Tomato tastings help to reawaken interests.

"For the last couple decades, we have seen only one type of tomato in the supermarket. Now you've got a situation where you're having to almost re-educate people," he said.

Yolo County is one of the leading heirloom-growing regions in California. Government agencies don't collect data on heirloom tomato production, but farmers and wholesalers estimate the state's harvest as high as 8 million pounds a year, with perhaps a quarter of that coming from Yolo County.

As recently as the early 1990s, commercial farmers produced virtually no heirloom tomatoes. Heirlooms, by definition, are varieties that existed before post-World War II breeding programs began to develop high-yielding tomatoes that resisted disease and could be shipped easily.

Lacking those traits, heirlooms are, by all accounts, a pain to grow in bulk. They are susceptible to disease and extreme weather, and they readily bruise or spoil when packaged, shipped and stored.

Still, as consumers began to seek out their old-fashioned taste and rich colors, even at supermarket prices of $5 a pound or more, farmers have figured out how to meet the demand. Heirlooms fetch a robust price on the wholesale market -- in the range of $2 a pound -- and the tomatoes are air-freighted as far away as Alaska and New York.

But farmers markets are where heirlooms really shine. At the Davis Farmers Market on a recent Wednesday afternoon, Noble shopped for tomatoes at a half-dozen booths. Some sold heirlooms exclusively. Tables were spread with boxes of the red and orange Marvel Striped, the dark, plump giant Purple Cherokee and other varieties in orange and yellow and green.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Jim Downing can be reached at (916) 321-1065 or jdowning@sacbee.com.