Other than any of the above, what is your absolute favorite for sweetness and best taste? Or if you recommned NOT growing any of the above, I would like to hear that as well. I am tired of flavorless storebought fruit from store shelves or Walmart plants.
Tammy

You'll have to decide for yourself which is the best tasting tomato.

As for beefsteaks I prefer a less sweet, more old fashioned flavor. Caspian pink is good, I am growing it again this year, but it is on the sweet side. Still makes a good sandwich and I also pile a few into sauce.

What most people are saying is give those a run and find out whether you like them or not. They all are good tomatoes, and each has its own good and bad qualities.

I would group-rank them this way

Sungold --sweetest fruity
Super 100's sweet
Would also recommend black cherry.

Brandywine - complex tomatoey-sweetish
Caspian Pink - complex tomatoey
Mortgage Lifter - not as good late season production as many other red-pink heirlooms in my garden.

Black Krim - complex- earthy, my favorite
Cherokee Purple- complex, tomatoey, not as earthy

Ananas noire, sweet, fruity, very pretty when cut, or really ugly depending on how you look at things. Fun to grow.

Black Plum - I was unimpressed. Seedy like large cherry, flavor was so-so. Huge plant lots of fruit, but can't cook with it because of high seed/gel to flesh ratio. I won't grow it again.

All in all I think you have a pretty good selection of flavor ranges. Caspian pink and Mortgage Lifter are probably interchangable but you don't need both. I would go for something like Neves Azorean Red, Omars Lebanese, Kosovo, Anna Russian or any one of several others instead of either one.

So all the answers you get will just be personal opinions - and they vary a great deal. Search 'taste' here (search bar at the bottom of the page) to see what I mean if you want to read through lots of previous discussions.

Best way to find out is to grow as many different ones as you have room for and see which one tastes the best to you.

Dave

Unfortunately, you will have to decide for yourself what is the sweetest tomato for you and your area. And digdirt is correct. A tomato that you are totally gaga over one year might be the biggest disappointment in the garden the next year. There are so many variables that can affect your tomatoes. In fact, you can have a great deal of variation in a single season. If you water your garden, then it rains heavily for several days, your tomatoes will likely have a watered down flavor compared to what you would get under "normal" circumstances. (Not that you can really consider anything about farming/gardening as normal.) That is one reason experienced gardeners will usually give a new variety a second try if the results weren't what they expected the first time.

BT,DT.

Bets

Your best bet is to do what you are doing, ask everyone, try their favorites, and see if you like how they taste in your garden. If the tomatoes everyone else loves are not sweet to you, assume it is because their soil/climate is different than yours.

That being said, in hot sunny Sacramento, my favorite sweeties are Jetsetter, Moskvich, Giant Belgium, Homesweet, Miracle Sweet, Sungold, Golden Honey Bunch, Tami-G, and last but not least, the tomato that won me $2500 for being the sweetest tomato in Sacramento, Jumbo Jim Orange.

Carla in Sac

The absolute sweetest and best flavored tomato I have tasted is a segregating selection from a cross of Sungold and Little Lucky. If it can be stabilized, it will set a new standard for good tasting and sweet tomatoes. Here's hoping it makes the cut.

The more varieties you have grown, the better the comparison you can make of good versus average flavor. I've grown well over 1000 varieties.

DarJones

1. Purple Russian. Plum type (shaped like roma) Low acid, aromatic, and (subjectively) sweet with great tomato flavor. Does not need salt for tasty fresh eating. Makes incredible sauces and salsas, too. Drawback - fruits crack easily if you get a rain near harvest time, I usually pick mine a bit green and let them ripen on the counter.

2. Caspian pink - different complex of flavor than purple russian, but many of the same comments could apply. Almost a beefsteak type, not at all a plum-type like purple russian. I've found they make tasty sauce, but need a lot more cooking because of more water in them.

3. Black Krim. Think a beefsteak type of Purple Russian with some earthy-ness (almost hints of a root vegetable) in the aroma.

NOTE - all of the above are INDETERMINATE types, which means the vines will go crazy and spread everywhere. Unlike determinate types, these will not form a nice upright compact bush. They need staked, and the flimsy wire cages from the store will be too small and also too weak to hold them. I build a ladder-trellis from 1x2 wooden slats for mine, with 6 inch squares all along, and secured at the ends of the row with steel "T" fence posts. I've had Purple Russian vines that were 8 feet high.

Black Plum: small, not bad tasting, prolific but TONS of gel and seeds and volunteers everywhere if you let any fruit hit the ground... Not overly impressed. Cute little bugger tho.

Sungold: Very sweet, prolific - a value add for sure.

Brandywine: my experience has not been positive. VERY sparse with fruit (not complaining) but I didn't find the taste to be that great in my garden. I'm in Z5 MA and it really didn't do it for me.
Cherokee Purple: worth it's weight... prolific, great tasting, pretty, texture is loooovelllyyyy! I think this is the love apple that got me HOOOKED. Value add for sure.

Ananas Noir: Not impressed. HUGE fruit, odd colored, pretty (UGLY), but not impressed with flavor. BUT lots of people love it.

Also, I like to taste test my tomatoes from the lower side. Half inch or so,cut, and eat the bowl leaving the skin....at first. Anyone...??

IMO, tomato sweetness isn't as important to the flavor as the correct balance of sweetness and acidity. To take some extremes as examples, I find Supersweet 100 too candy-sweet and lacking in depth (I loved the old, original Sweet 100), while Rutgers, though unsurpassed as a canning tomato, is too acid and not sweet enough for optimum table use.

My tastebuds find their perfect balance in the older beefsteaks, both heirloom and hybrid.

If your portion of WV is climatically similar to PA north of Pittsburgh and you have heavy, yellow-clay soil you are likely to find that the Big Boys and Supersteaks that grow like weeds for my father do well for you.

Your tastebuds may not agree with mine or anyone else's but experimenting with various varieties over the years is part of the fun of gardening. Enjoy the journey.

I have never found sungold to be "sweet" but it is our favorite because it has that big tomato flavor in a small package.

We tried the German Stripe last year and it had no flavor. Kellogg's Breakfast was delicious! We also grew Aunt Ruby's German Green and it had the right blend of spice, tang and sweet.

Taste is so subjective. ;-)

http://www.feldoncentral.com/garden/photos/v/memberphotos/earl/earlsfa ux/

No, that's sure not true.

You are mistaken. It is fairly common and a courtesy when posters mention where they purchased the seed. Since there are thousands of different tomato varieties, locating a particular one can be time consuming.

Black Krim

I planted early May this year and these set on before the high temps. These were large and I could not tell the taste difference between the two.

Big Beef have been a fav but are very small this year. Rutgers set on heavy early but the later ones have something funky going on with the fruit. Have only had 2 Brandywine to set on and have few blooms on the new growth on any of my 16 plants right now.

Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, and Roma are disappointing so far. Perhaps it's because I'm comparing it to the Amish Paste (Roma-shaped, but juicy). Amish Paste was so sweet, complex, and lovely I almost cried.

Good luck experimenting with different varieties!

Delicious!

Cindy

Here are the voting results.

Shannon's and Mexico Midget (tied at 5 votes each)
Cossack Pineapple and Dester Amish (4 votes each)
Black Cherry, Cherokee Purple, and Sungold Hybrid (3 votes each) Anna Russian, German Queen, Orange Heirloom, and Strawberry Margarita (2 votes each)

I pretty much agreed with the results although to me the best tasting was Cossack Pineapple with the Mexico Midget second.
The Cossack Pineapple is really what is called a "Ground Cherry" though not exactly a Tomato.
But it was tasty as could be.

The Mexico Midget which was VERY tiny, like the size of a regular pencil eraser on the end of a #2 pencil was very good amazingly. Almost sweet with a very nice tomato flavor.

My favorite fresh slicer is Julia child. I think it's fantastic because it has a complex flavor with high sugar and has a tart after finish. The sweetest tomato I have grown to date was Amana Orange, and it was tasty. Other varieties that have gotten my attention are Brandywine OTV, Bull's Heart, Italian heirloom, and most of the blacks

For a sweet tomato, SunSugar F1 tastes better than Sungold F1. Sungold is prone to splitting (even in dry summers) and has an aftertaste that I find unpleasant. The first one is good, but I get tired of them early in the season, whereas I like the SunSugars all season.

I grew Striped German last year and it was juicy and sweet. I'm not sure I'll grow it again, because it too juicy for tomato sandwiches, but it was great on its own. Also, it was a late tomato, and I got a lot of them all at once.

Pink tomatoes are among the sweetest. I've also liked Marianna's Peace, Marizol Bratka, and Pruden's Purple.