Are the green tomatoes scarred the same way?

Honestly I don't know ... I was away for about a week and I missed most of the green stage for these ones. The ones on the vine right now that are green (there are 2) aren't scarred but I don't know if that will develop later or not.

Does anyone know what causes this? What it is?

Looks like they have radial and concentric cracks. Usually you'll get one or the other, but not both on the same fruit.

Actually, I think they look pretty cool. You said the insides are fine, so I wouldn't worry.

I did Vintage Wine 2 years in a row and found cracking, both concentric and radial, to be a chronic problem with them. Much more than with any other varieties I was growing at the time.

Mine didn't get as bad as yours appear but were really unappealing in appearance. Some of the cracking is common to the variety. Enough so that I gave up on them for better alternatives.

I sure don't mind less-than-perfect tomatoes bu VW goes too far down the scale for me.

Dave

Thank you for the feedback...I thought maybe some sort of disease but I guess this is just cracking, although quite a bit of it! Never seen anything like this on a tomato before.

They ARE fairly unappealing in appearance and I tend to give a lot of tomatoes away to friends/family/neighbours so even though these are fine on the inside, you can't really give them away when they look like this!!

Dave, thanks for letting me know that this tends to be a problem with this variety ... it was starting to look that way to me, but its always nice to hear that other people have had the same problem, lol. They are so sweet and are quite popular, but I think that if the majority of them are going to crack like this, I'll probably be scratching Vintage Wine off of my growing list next year.

I'm assuming that there's not much I can do to prevent this kind of cracking, especially if other tomato varieties are unaffected (ie not a weather or soil problem)?

I am growing these for the first time this year. I was interested to see what someone from a completely different zone said about their performance. I too, in zone 8a have cracking - A little less than above, but similar. Cracks have been opening before the tomato is fully ripe. So I must pick before ripe but I can't let them continue to ripen or they rot. So the shoulders stay green, and there is quite a core in the center that is fibrous and not tasty at all. The green is bitter but the more ripened, lower fruit smells DELICIOUS and you can tell why they call this Vintage Wine. The plant is very healthy, the fruit incredibly abundant...I may pick some early to see if I can ripen off the vine without rot and opened cracks. I was afraid heat and humidity were the culprits but perhaps not. Too bad, I love that this tomato is so abundant. The quality is just not quite there.

What you are likely seeing is due to thin skin and the expanding fruits readily crack the skin. Calcium will help in producing stronger skin on the fruit. This may be beyond what you might want to do but today I sprayed my greenhouse tomatoes with a Nutri-Cal formulation to help prevent that sort of occurance. Some varieties are more prone to cracking but Vintage Wine is such a beautiful tomato to give up on without a little extra effort.

Those were the 2 worst specimens of the year that I posted photos of to see what was wrong. They weren't all that bad, but there was enough cracking on enough of the tomatoes that I have given them up. The parts that were fine were lovely, and I could use them myself, but I give lots of tomatoes away and people are wary of tomatoes that look like that. I figured, if it was going to be a chronic problem, I could find other varieties that grew better for me and tasted good as well.

You can try picking them with a blush of color and letting them ripen inside ... it helps a little, if not a lot ... I wish reviews on this tomato would mention cracking as a problem, I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong as none of my other tomatoes were affected ... until I came here to ask :)