Quick Summary of Absinthe
- 🌍 Origin: A well-known Green-When-Ripe (GWR) heirloom. In the Russian seed market, it is widely circulated by collectors like Valentina Redko.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), regular leaf (if you get a potato leaf, it is an off-type). It can be a bit of a slow starter in the spring, but once it gets going, it is a vigorous plant that handles drought well. It can set so much heavy fruit that it breaks greenhouse tying strings.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large to massive green beefsteaks. Average weight is 200 g (7 oz), but when pruned to 2 stems, fruits can easily reach 500–700 g (1.1–1.5 lbs). The skin is light green, but when fully ripe, it develops a beautiful, unusual pink blush on the outside and a striking pink core/marbling inside.
- 👅 Flavor & Texture: Highly praised for a sweet, fruity flavor profile that isn’t bland. Unlike some green varieties that can be excessively watery, Absinthe is quite dense and meaty.
- ⏳ Yield & Storage: Mid-early to mid-season. Yields can vary (some report massive harvests, others report some blossom drop). Important: It has a very short shelf life. It softens quickly after ripening and must be eaten or processed promptly.
Absinthe (Абсент)
Variety from Valentina Redko. Indet, mid-season, grew in Open Ground. The tomatoes have a light green color, sometimes with a pink center when cut. Weight from 200g (7 oz) and up.
👍 😋 😋
And how does it taste? I didn’t manage to try it this year. I grew one bush, but I planted it late, so the tomatoes only appeared towards the end of August. They hung there green, and then started turning pink. I thought maybe they were an off-type (wrong seeds) or cross-pollinated, so I tossed them into the general pile, and from there their fate is unknown 😕
I didn’t notice the promised buttery texture, but the taste is pleasant, with fruity notes, not bland.
tomik wrote:
…the tomatoes only appeared towards the end of August. They hung there green, and then started turning pink.
That is highly characteristic of it — sometimes a beautiful and unusual pink blush appears on the skin. So it definitely was Absinthe.
For me, it also took a long time to get going, but towards the end of summer, it just buried me in large (despite a total drought) and tasty fruits.
Well, I finally got to try Absinthe this season 👍 The fruits are the exact same color as Elena’s in the first post 🙂 In terms of ripening, it is mid-early. Productive, not watery like many green-fruited varieties, tasty, with a nice sweetness. Cut open, I only found a photo of it next to Malakhitovaya Shkatulka (Malachite Box).
Anela wrote:
[photos]
Are you going to grow Absinthe again in 2016? I will repeat it, an interesting variety. 👍
Fotinia wrote:
Are you going to grow Absinthe again in 2016? I will repeat it, an interesting variety. 👍
I liked the variety, seeds from Redko. I also have Bunte Pflaume from Popenko, and I’m wondering if they are twins??! There are some minor differences, but… I will repeat it, just not in 2016.
I liked the variety very much, the yield in the greenhouse was very good — it broke my tying strings several times… the only “but” is that it doesn’t store well, it gets soft very quickly.
I became a fan of Absinthe 🫣 thanks to seeds from Natalya-Yaroslavna, thank you 🌷.
The tomatoes are tasty and beautiful, I’ve never had green ones like this before that had pink stripes 🙂.
Yield-wise, it didn’t do so well for me, not all the blossoms set fruit.
My Absinthe sprouted with a potato leaf?? Probably not the real one (off-type). 😞
In this year, 2023, I planted tomato Absinthe and Absinthe No. 2. I really liked both tomatoes. I will now squeeze at least 1 bush of this variety into my plantings every year. The tomato didn’t have a huge number of fruits, but everything that was on the bush turned out to be large, around 500-700 grams (1.1-1.5 lbs). Planted in the greenhouse, pruned to 2 stems.
