STILL THE #1 HEIRLOOM TOMATO 140 YEARS LATER
 
Brandywine produces enormous, slightly flattened, heavily ribbed fruits that regularly hit 1–2 pounds each, with a gorgeous rosy-pink skin and meaty, pinkish-red flesh. The flavor is legendary — intensely rich, sweet, and complex with almost no acid bite.
 
Plants are tall, vigorous indeterminates with distinctive potato-leaf foliage, growing 6–10 feet or more in warm climates and needing serious staking or caging to support the massive fruits.

Yield is modest compared to modern hybrids but every single tomato is a flavor bomb worth waiting for — it’s a classic case of quality over quantity. Because the fruits are so big, juicy, and thin-skinned, Brandywine is primarily a fresh-eating slicer.

The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

HISTORY: 
The Real Origin (1880s–1930s): The tomato we now call Brandywine did not come from the Brandywine River valley in Pennsylvania or Delaware, despite decades of romantic myth. It traces to an old pink-fruited, potato-leaf family heirloom grown since at least the 1880s by the Sudduth family of Cumberland County, Tennessee (near Crab Orchard). The Sudduths had grown this tomato for generations and simply called it their “pink tomato” or “big pink.” It was never commercially offered and remained completely unknown outside their immediate community for nearly a century.
 
The First Public Appearance (1980–1982): In 1980–1981, an elderly Tennessee gardener named Dorris Sudduth (or possibly her daughter) shared seeds with Cincinnati-area tomato collector Ben Quisenberry (Stump of the World), one of the early pioneers of heirloom seed preservation.
 
Quisenberry grew it out and was blown away by the size and flavor. Because the fruits were a deep rose-pink and came from near the Tennessee–Kentucky border, he decided to name it “Brandywine” after the famous Brandywine River associated with Revolutionary War history — a completely invented name with zero connection to the actual origin, but it stuck instantly because it sounded perfect.
 
Quisenberry began distributing seeds to a small circle of tomato enthusiasts and listed it in the very first Seed Savers Exchange yearbook in 1982. That listing ignited the explosion.

My seed is from the USDA ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit (GRIN) Accession: PI 647526
 
Sold as a single plant in a 3.5" pot.