Half the tomatoes scored 'watery'. The other half cost 90p per 100g
The Guardian tested the nation's vine tomatoes with a refractometer, and the instrument did not blink: scores from a 'bland and watery' Brix 4 to a rare 7. Read the middle of the table and despair quietly — 'flat, one-dimensional', 'firm but flavourless', 'watery and mild'. These are this summer's tomatoes, described by a friend.
The economics follow the flavour downhill. Waitrose asks 90p per 100 grams for a Dutch tomato assessed as 'without much substance'. The £3.25 organic option was the worst in the test. Paying more, the data confirms, mostly buys you a nicer box for the disappointment.
The winners exist — a maroon Isle of Wight cocktail number, an honest Essex organic — the way winners always exist: as proof of what the rest could have been.
And the final instruction lands like prophecy: never refrigerate a tomato, it ruins texture and taste. The nation's tomatoes have been dying in fridges for seventy years, and we are only being told NOW. Enjoy the Brix while it lasts; the season, as ever, is already ending. Winter is unbothered, and it eats tinned.