For centuries, Italian tomatoes were anything but uniform. They came in different shapes, colors, sizes and textures, each adapted to a particular landscape and climate. Many of these varieties nearly disappeared when modern agriculture began to prefer tomatoes that were easier to grow, transport, and sell, but today, growers across Italy are bringing some of the country’s most unusual tomatoes back from the edge of extinction, each one telling a story of place and adaptation.
Pick a Canestrino di Lucca off the vine in August and it looks like a tomato that has gone wrong: lopsided and deeply ribbed, more basket than sphere, which is exactly what the name says, as it comes from canestro. The shoulders stay green when the rest of the fruit has gone red, and a scatter of fine cracks runs just below the stem.
