The tomato industry has been trying for years to find a tomato that's big in size but still packed full of flavour. It's the holy grail everyone's looking for – and I think we’ve found it with the Goutini tomato!
The Goutini is very exciting because it’s the size of a smallish beefsteak tomato but with an equivalent sweetness to cherry tomatoes, which has been unheard of until now in the tomato world.
Everybody's used to the taste of beefsteak tomatoes; the Goutini tastes three times deeper and sweeter than those. It's got an initial sweetness but inside there's the seeds and seed gel that give it a level of acidity that's so important in the tomato flavour.
It's the sort of tomato you only find once every 20 years – it really is a special variety.
I came across it in a trial in Holland three years ago but I was only given the official seed to grow it last year: the seed companies are very protective of their new varieties and they don’t want to release them too soon.
Asda is world class in bringing innovative products to market – especially when the supermarket finds something it knows customers will love. We've launched three new varieties in the past three years with Asda, including the Tomkin tomato.
All the tomatoes we grow here are 100 per cent non-GM, produced on standard pollination production methods. We're based in Southport on the Lancashire Riviera and everything we do is about maximising flavour.
It's about keeping the environment and temperature right all year round. It's easy to grow tomatoes on a lovely hot summer day, but we've got to grow tomatoes with the same flavour in March when it's raining and foggy as we do in July. That's where the fun and skill and art comes into play.
It's about keeping the plants strong enough for when the good weather comes, which is where our innovative LED lighting comes in. It enables us to grow delicious tomatoes all year round. Find out more about it here.
The Goutini tomatoes are available exclusively to Asda in these 17 stores.
