It’s considered to be the best tomato in the world by chefs, food writers, and millions of home cooks. Yet they make up less than 1% of all the tomatoes grown in Italy, and the region where they’re grown, known as San Marzano, totals a mere 370 acres. So how can American food retailer’s shelves be stocked with millions upon millions of cans of San Marzano tomatoes?
Fair question.

Now back to my original question: How can an area so small produce millions of cans of the famed San Marzano tomatoes? Answer: It can’t.

If you look closely at the cans of tomatoes at the store, you’ll see “San Marzano Style,” “La San Marzano,” “San Merican,” and other clever derivations. For the most part, they’re perfectly good tomatoes, but they aren’t the real deal. And if they’re crushed or diced — anything other than whole — they absolutely aren’t genuine San Marzano tomatoes.

However, they may well be (and likely are) hybrids of the original. In the 1960s a disease decimated the San Marzano crops, threatening the very survival of the family farmers and the future of the famed tomato. 

Enter the Roma tomato, which wasn’t developed in Rome, but rather in Beltsville, Maryland, at the USDA’s Plant Industry Station. Scientists there crossed three tomato varieties — Red Top, Pan America, and San Marzano — and produced a hybrid that yielded larger fruits, more disease resistant, and was determinate. And in a stroke of marketing genius, they called it Roma.

(San Marzano tomatoes are indeterminate, making management of their often 10-foot vines more labor intensive, and the fruits ripened over a period of several weeks. The new indeterminate hybrid grew to a mere four feet or so, and their fruits ripened over a much narrower period of time. Both factors reduced labor costs.)

But a few diehards in Italy were determined to bring back their famed San Marzano, and went in search of any surviving plants in the region, to no avail. However, they did find 27 possible candidates, all cultivars with similar genetics and flavor as well as decent disease resistance. But only two were considered worthy of the San Marzano crown, one they named San Marzano 2 (clever, huh?), and the other Kiros, which they decided would become the new San Marzano tomato.

And so began the revival of the famed region and production of its coveted tomato, even though it wasn’t actually the same tomato. And to distinguish themselves from all the other tomato-growing regions in Italy and elsewhere, and to put a stop to potential imposters, growers created the Consortium for the Protection of the San Marzano Tomato of the Agro Sarnese-Nocerino, which regulates every single phase of San Marzano tomato production, from seed to label.

They also designated the region as a DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) to further protect their products from counterfeits, much like Parma protected its Parmigiano Reggiano after others began imitating it. But here’s the catch: the consortium only controls what’s sold in Italy. It has no jurisdiction in the United States, which is why 95% of the millions of so-called San Marzano tomatoes sold here are fakes, including those with the DOP designation.

But for the most part, they’re all great tomatoes for making sauces, almost as good as the La Roma tomatoes I have growing in my garden.

Buon Appetito!

I’m perhaps best known as a gardener, but I actually spend more time in the kitchen than in the garden, cooking seven nights a week. And while I admit to being a hardcore carnivore, my style of cooking is very veggie centric, and includes dishes from around the world. I’ll feature my favorites next week.