I didn't move to Ireland for the tomatoes. Granted, on a hot summer's day, there are few things that are more delicious than that explosive mix of sweet-tart juice. Unfortunately, it normally takes a good many of those hot summer days to make a tomato worth eating. And I didn't move to Ireland for that, either.
So how is it that lately I’ve been gorging on absolutely splendid Irish-grown tomatoes?
I’ve fixed them enough different ways to make a week’s worth of dinners. I’ve served them mixed into a salad with fresh borlotti beans, sliced on sandwiches with grilled lamb, chopped up into a raw sauce for dried pasta, stuffed with tuna salad, chopped into a sauce for herbed fresh goat’s cheese, and in panzanella – the juices soaked up by chunks of stale sourdough.
The leftovers I confited – cut in half lengthwise and baked slowly with olive oil, garlic, shallots and herbs until they were almost a jam.
Back in California where summers are hot and dry, if you know where to shop, good tomatoes are so easy to find we almost take them for granted. Not so here.
What’s turned me into the Forrest Gump of Irish tomatoes? Credit a combination of technology, botany and entrepreneurship. In other words, modern agriculture.
If anyone still clings to the notion of farmers as wellie-wearing rustics, a quick tour of Grantstown Nurseries in Ballygunner, just outside Waterford, should provide a sure cure.
Over the past decade tastes have shifted to sweeter cherry types – round, plum-shaped and so-called San Marzanos.
Grantstown, run by second-generation tomato man David Currid, is one of only eight commercial growers of tomatoes in Ireland. His fruits are available under the Grantstown Tomatoes label at my local Ardkeen Quality Food Store, and under premium own-store labels at selected Dunnes, Tesco and SuperValu stores throughout Ireland.
The tomatoes are grown in a collection of two glasshouses, totaling roughly one hectare. These are tall, square structures, more reminiscent of the light-filled architecture of a modern airport lobby than the low, dim polytunnels of yore. Standing inside one of them, you can almost feel the tomatoes growing.
Roughly 48,000 plants of eight different varieties grow here. Back in his father’s day, Currid says Irish preferences ran to round slicing tomatoes, but particularly over the past decade tastes have shifted to sweeter cherry types – round, plum-shaped and so-called San Marzanos.
They are planted in long, waist-high rows rooted in coir bricks made from a byproduct of coconut processing, and they grow trellised on string cordons 3½m long.
Only a foot tall when they are planted in January, by mid-July the vines coil and snake upward toward the 5m-high ceiling, bundled together like the cables at a server farm. Currid says a vine can reach 13m long and that in the peak season they can grow as much as 30cm in a week.
The plants are fed with rainwater, as much as 20,000 to 30,000 litres a day. Collected year-round from the roof, it is spiked with a precise blend of nutrients, determined by sending plant leaves to a laboratory in Holland for analysis every three weeks. The water that isn’t absorbed is recirculated after being sterilized with ultraviolet light.
The plants also benefit from being “fed” carbon dioxide from long balloon-like tubes that run the length of the rows. It is a byproduct of the heating system used to maintain the glasshouse temperature of a constant 20 degrees during the day and 18 degrees at night.
All of that is impressive, but what I’m most struck by is the presence of thousands of red ripe tomatoes. Here’s a dirty little secret I learned during a couple of decades writing about farming in California: what is considered “vine-ripe” for common commercial purposes is when a green tomato barely shows a pink blush. Still rock-hard, they are picked and stored to finish ripening off the vine.
‘Explosive’
Tomatoes treated this way can be acceptable, but rarely anything more. It’s no wonder that until the advent of specialty growers, consumer surveys showed that the state of the tomato was the single biggest source of customer unhappiness in the grocery.
That’s not a problem with these coddled Grantstown fruits. I pluck one from the vine and pop it into my mouth. “Explosive” is the only word I can think of for the flavour. It is tart and sweet at the same time but with underlying layers that vary from overtly fruity to almost meaty.
This kind of taste does not come cheap. Grantstown tomatoes sell at a premium. But that extra charge is hard-earned. Currid estimates that his one-hectare operation cost about €1.5 million to build. Even the seeds are expensive – roughly €1 a pop and that’s before a 55 per cent germination rate.
Grantstown has six full-time workers and adds another eight during peak season. Two people work full-time removing excess leaves (it has been determined that 12 leaves per vine is enough to support good fruit without drawing excess energy from the plant).
Competition is fierce, not so much from other Irish growers but from the giant hothouses in Holland. There are roughly 15 hectares of hothouse tomatoes in all of Ireland and there are individual glasshouses in Holland that are almost that big. The total under cultivation there is almost 40 square miles.
But growing in that kind of quantity, quality has to suffer. And while imported tomatoes might be cheaper, they aren’t likely to deliver the kind of flavour that will make your summer.
