Quick Summary of Aces High
- 🌍 Origin: A rare dark cocktail tomato. In the Russian seed market, it became famous due to a hilarious translation error: the first person to import it used Google Translate, resulting in “High Aces” (as in playing cards: Tuzy Vysokie). Growers later pointed out it’s actually named after the famous Iron Maiden song about WWII flying aces.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, but generally grows compactly to about 1.5 m (5 ft). It features Potato Leaf (PL) foliage, though the leaves are noticeably narrower than typical potato-leaf varieties. Shows good resistance to Leaf Mold (Cladosporium).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large cherry or cocktail-sized tomatoes weighing 30-60 g (1-2 oz). They boast a gorgeous deep purple/mahogany color with pronounced dark green shoulders. The walls are thick, but the interior locules are packed with juicy green gel.
- 👅 Flavor: Intense and robust. This is not a blandly sweet tomato. It delivers a sharp, sweet-and-sour “old-fashioned” tang. The flavor leans sweeter if allowed to fully ripen on the vine.
- ⏳ Maturity & Yield: Very early season. It is a workhorse variety that sets massive trusses of fruit in both extreme heat and cold. Yields can rival large beefsteak varieties purely due to the sheer volume of fruit.
Aces High
Variety description: Indet. Fruits are deep purple, 30-40g (1-1.4 oz), with an outstanding taste. A super tomato! Very rare variety. Seeds are from Sofia, a huge thank you to her!
The variety is tall, vigorous, productive, and tasty! I don’t know why I didn’t photograph it during its peak fruiting period, I only have a few photos. I pruned the suckers and led the bush into 2 stems, which is probably why the fruits turned out larger than advertised. The tomatoes are juicy but thick-walled. You can use them for canning in jars or for sun-drying. I really liked the variety.
I also really liked this variety. Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of cherry and cocktail tomatoes, but the taste of this one made me forget my size preferences. My plant grew into 4 stems, the fruits were 30 – 60 g (1 – 2 oz), and the total yield is right up there with large- and mid-fruited varieties because of the massive number of clusters. Each cluster weighs up to 300 g (10.5 oz). Seeds were from the German collector asmx.
Now about the translation of the name. Apparently, the first person to distribute the variety in Russia blindly trusted Google Translate, which is how we got “High Aces” (like playing cards). It’s nonsense. If you search for the English name of the variety, you immediately see the Wikipedia article about the Iron Maiden song of the same name, which is about English fighter aces of World War II.
Also, I think the left photo in Yulya’s post with the plum-shaped green tomatoes isn’t Aces High. Aces High are practically round, and the stem on that truss in the photo is too long.
Let me explain a little bit about its flavor profile. This variety is for those who love tomatoes with a tangy kick. That is, it’s sweet-and-sour, very suitable for pickling/canning in jars. The taste and aroma are very intense, and there is a lot of liquid in the locules. However, it never reaches the canning stage in our house; they get eaten completely fresh before canning even begins. Overall, it’s not for lovers of bland, purely sweet tomatoes.
Aleksander wrote:
This variety is for those who love tomatoes with a tangy kick… Overall, it’s not for lovers of bland, purely sweet tomatoes.
I share your flavor preferences. I also dislike bland sweetness… But nevertheless, I love it when tomatoes have a lot of sweetness, it just absolutely must be offset by an appropriate amount of tartness.
I’ve got my eye on the Aces High variety. Especially since visually, with its green shoulders, it looks very promising. In my experience, varieties that look exactly like that often have the most vibrant flavor.
I’m only worried about one thing — are the fruits of this variety overly juicy/watery?
T@tk@ wrote:
I’m only worried about one thing — are the fruits of this variety overly juicy/watery?
This is all very subjective, you just have to try it. The walls are thick, and the green jelly inside doesn’t seem too runny to me.
Alexander, what kind of leaf does it have? Potato leaf or regular?
Svetikk wrote:
Alexander, what kind of leaf does it have? Potato leaf or regular?
It is a Potato Leaf, but compared to other potato-leaf varieties, it is narrow.
In 2023, it wasn’t affected too badly by Cladosporium (leaf mold) for me, though the same could be said for many other varieties that year.
Hello, can you tell me how and where to buy these seeds?
A quick search this year shows several seed vendors selling it now.
An excellent variety. Last year I grew it in the greenhouse, this year I repeated it in Open Ground (OG). It was one of the earliest varieties for me both this season and last. Sets fruit very well in both cold and heat.
Very tasty throughout the entire season, from the first tomato to the last—there wasn’t a single bland one. A bright sweetness combined with a clearly perceptible tartness gives its flavor great intensity. The flesh is pleasant, with a fairly large amount of gel that makes it juicy. The taste directly depends on the degree of ripeness. The riper it gets, the less tartness remains, and the sweetness becomes more dominant. The little tomatoes hang well on the bush and can be stored for a bit without losing much flavor. The bush is not very tall, around 150 cm (5 ft) in the greenhouse. Yield is good.
Huge thanks to Alexander (Aleksander) for the seeds.
