Kingsville, ON (June 21st) – Mastronardi Produce/SUNSET® took top honors at the 2011 Hottest Tomato Competition once again. For the fourth year in a row, Mastronardi takes the lead by bringing home five (5) out of eight (8) awards in the very important Tomato category. The win confirms the focus that Mastronardi Produce puts on its continuous development of flavorful tomatoes such as Zima™ -the seriously sweet tomato™ and Delano™ the exciting new flavorful TOV.
R.E.A.CH. International, creates and organizes this competition exclusively for the Ontario Greenhouse Industry with proceeds going towards children in less fortunate countries as well as local food banks to help the hungry. As a part of the annual Hottest Tomato, Perfect Pepper and Coolest Cucumber Event presented by REACH in Leamington, Ontario, Mastronardi took top honors in the following categories:
People’s Choice Award - Zima™
Best Overall Tomato - Zima™
Best Hothouse Bite Size Tomato – Zima™
Best Hothouse Cluster Tomato – Delano™
Best Hothouse Cocktail Tomato – Champagne™
Best Hothouse Red Bell Pepper - SUNSET® Sweet Bell Pepper
Best Specialty Hot Pepper - SUNSET® Ancient Hots™
People’s Choice Award - SUNSET® Ancient Sweets™
“We are extremely proud that our gourmet tomatoes captured these coveted awards.” stated Paul Mastronardi, President. “The demand for Zima™ tomatoes has been overwhelming, we have been increasing plantings just to keep up.” “And now our Delano™ flavor TOV has successfully added winning taste to the Tomato on the Vine category. Our company was built on flavor & quality and awards such as this further validates what we stand for,”
The general public was able to sample all the different tomato, pepper and cucumber varieties in the competition throughout the weekend and the feedback surrounding Zima™ tomatoes was amazing. Even people that weren’t “tomato lovers” stated that they enjoyed these and would purchases them in the future.
