Robert Whirry earned a BA with honors in both legal studies and literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and he has been a self-employed consultant since 1990. Robert Whirry hosts an annual heirloom tomato party each year for 125 guests, where he cooks and serves a five-course meal with at least one dish centering around heirloom tomatoes.

1. Heirloom Tomatoes
Robert Whirry

2. Introduction
• Robert Whirry earned a BA with honors in both legal studies
and literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz,
and he has been a self-employed consultant since 1990.
Robert Whirry hosts an annual heirloom tomato party each
year for 125 guests, where he cooks and serves a five-course
meal with at least one dish centering around heirloom
tomatoes.
Heirloom tomatoes are varieties that have been passed down
through several family generations because of their particular
positive characteristics. Due to their recent popularity the
term heirloom has been used commercially, and it has become
unclear just what makes a tomato an heirloom. Renown
tomato experts Craig LeHoullier and Carolyn Male have
categorized heirlooms in the following manner.

3. Heirloom Tomatoes
• Commercial heirlooms are open-pollinated tomatoes in existence
before 1940, or other varieties at least 50 years old. Family
heirlooms were described above. Created heirlooms come from
cross-breeding two tomato varieties (at least one must be an
heirloom), and then de-hybridizing the subsequent seeds until they
acquire the desired characteristics from both plants. Mystery
heirlooms come from the unintentional cross-breeding of at least
one heirloom tomato with another.
Heirloom tomatoes are becoming more popular because over the
years, farmers have bred their tomatoes more for their appearance,
shipping, and storage qualities than their taste. The original
heirlooms had always been grown in small gardens by individuals,
so their taste was valued much more than their shape or resistance
to damage.