📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Bordo Shokoladnoye (Chocolate Bordeaux)
- 🌍 Origin: A Russian/Eastern European heirloom circulated by collectors. Crucial Note: After much debate, growers have realized that the “true” strain of this tomato is virtually identical to the Spanish heirloom Morado Chocolate.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, but its height varies wildly depending on conditions. Outdoors, it stays short (under 1m / 3ft) and sprawls like an octopus. In a greenhouse, it can reach 1.5m (5ft). It typically has wimpy, wispy foliage and surprisingly tiny blossoms for a large-fruited variety. Often throws “megablooms” (fused blossoms).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Beware of commercial off-types! The true collector’s strain produces oblate (flat-round), brick-red/chocolate-brown beefsteaks with dark green shoulders, weighing 150-400g (5-14 oz). However, a commercial seed company (“Dachnik”) sells an off-type that produces tasteless brown pear/truffle shapes.
- 👅 Flavor: The true strain is incredibly delicious—sweet with a pleasant acidic tang, very juicy and meaty. Pro Tip: It must be vine-ripened! It noticeably loses its flavor if picked green and ripened indoors. It also has a short shelf life and softens quickly.
Moderate indet (1.5m / 5ft). Grew it in the greenhouse. A very heavy yielder 👋. The fruits are beautiful, round, not overly large, and gathered in trusses of 6-8.
This variety reveals its absolute best flavor only when allowed to fully ripen on the vine 😋👍. When vine-ripened, it is soooo delicious 😋😋😋. However, if you pick it early to ripen indoors, it definitely loses some of its flavor. They are not prone to cracking; the tomatoes are firm and juicy. I really liked them! Seeds originally from collector V.D. Popenko.
Greetings from the St. Petersburg seed-savers meetup! (I’m using Gnomik’s account right now). We’ve been discussing this, and we reached the consensus that you got an off-type (crossed/wrong seeds)—your fruits are way too small. Polina (borchanochka) grew the real deal, and her fruits were much larger, up to 400g (14 oz).
Honestly, Svetlana’s photos look exactly like the Black Apple (Chernoye Yabloko) variety. 😳
Galochka, I agree with you—it looks very much like Black Apple, and Popenko does sell that one too.
Well, it looks like Popenko sinned a little and mixed up his seeds 😉. Could someone please show me what the TRUE Chocolate Bordeaux is supposed to look like?
I’ve been growing this variety for a long time, since 2007-2008. In my climate, it performs much better outdoors in open ground than in the greenhouse. Mid-season.
The bush is wimpy and has wispy foliage. Height is only about 60-70cm (2-2.5 ft). The blossoms are surprisingly tiny for such a large-fruited variety.
The fruits are oblate, brick-brown in color, with dark green shoulders that turn dark brown when fully overripe. Weight ranges from 150g to 400g (5-14 oz). They are meaty and juicy, with a pleasant acidity and sweetness. For me, it is somewhat prone to cracking.
Here are mine from 2013 (the bottom one is 250g, top is 320g), and the smaller one is from this year.
Svetlana and Polina, do you still have the official seller’s description? Does what you grew actually match what was expected?
Sveta, apparently Popenko realized he had a seed mix-up because he completely removed it from his catalog 😲. I don’t remember the exact description anymore. Visually, Polina’s and my tomatoes look very similar, mine just didn’t get as large (though maybe our terrible weather was to blame for that).
Quote from Svetlyachok-plus:
Visually, Polina’s and my tomatoes look very similar, mine just didn’t get as large…
Svet, forget the weight for a second—mine has a very distinct identifying trait: tiny blossoms for a large-fruited variety. And your tomatoes looked much rounder, didn’t they? 😊
Yeah, Polina, you’re right. I actually thought mine were going to turn into cherries they were so small! 😲
See! So shape and weight aren’t the only factors 😉. Such a specific genetic quirk (tiny blossoms yielding big fruit) can’t belong to just any random variety. So it turns out we probably grew the exact same strain, it just expressed itself differently in our respective conditions.
I looked it up, and search engines only give one official description, from collector Brizhan:
“Bordo Shokoladnoye (Chocolate Bordeaux) – an amateur breeding variety with highly unusual, beautiful fruits. Indeterminate, moderate foliage, requires staking and pruning, up to 1.5m tall. Large oblate fruits, 300-400g, of an unusual lilac-burgundy-violet-chocolate color. Dark cherry interior, very sweet flesh, meaty with few seeds. 4-5 fruits per truss, setting 5-6 trusses simultaneously. High yield, disease resistant.”
Sveta, it’s totally possible I got mine from him, as I made a huuuuge order from him back in the day. But his description is confusing: the height doesn’t match (though maybe in a greenhouse it hits 1.5m), and the color is definitely off. There is absolutely zero “lilac/violet” tint in mine. To me, it’s just brick-red/brown. Also, mine definitely doesn’t set 5 trusses simultaneously—it sets them gradually.
My Chocolate Bordeaux was completely different. The shape was a large pear/truffle. And the color truly was milk chocolate.
I grew it this year from seedlings I got from one of the girls at our meetup. Turns out, the strain traces back to our Polina. And it matches her descriptions perfectly!
The bush outdoors didn’t exceed 80cm (2.5 ft). It is incredibly wimpy for holding such heavy tomatoes (mine averaged around 200g / 7 oz—my absolute favorite size). It sprawls like an octopus: I took my eyes off it for a second, and it had thrown up 4-5 main stems from the root, all loaded with fruit. I had to prune away some of the extra stems so the rest would ripen.
There were a LOT of megablooms (fused blossoms). At first, I picked them off, but then I stopped because I was afraid I wouldn’t get any fruit at all. I didn’t weigh the total yield, but I easily harvested a standard large fruit crate of 200g+ tomatoes off a single bush.
Natasha, that seedling probably came from me; I brought some to the spring meetup. But the original seeds were indeed from Polina. Even in my greenhouse, it stayed pretty short, maybe 90cm (3 ft). Started producing early and kept going until September. I really liked the tomatoes overall, but they don’t store well at all—they get soft fast.
Here is what my “Chocolate Bordeaux” looked like. I walked around these beautiful clusters all summer, admiring them… It was a heavy yielder both in the greenhouse and outdoors. 150-200g fruits. I kept waiting and waiting for them to finally taste good. It never happened. I don’t plan on ever planting it again; I didn’t even bother saving seeds. The seeds came from a commercial packet from the “Dachnik Podmoskovya” store.
Tatiana, those look absolutely nothing like our Nizhny Novgorod Bordeaux. Looks like our wines came from different vineyards! 😂
Mine grew in the greenhouse, so it got tall. Brick-red color, delicious, with a great yield. My seeds originally came from Popenko. I loved the variety and will definitely plant it again later.
Nadya, why is the picture labeled “Morado”? 🤔 It’s gorgeous, though!
I grew a variety last year called Morado Chocolate. This year, I intentionally planted both Morado and Bordo Shokoladnoye right next to each other. They turned out to be the exact same variety! 😊
“Morado” translates to purple, but the color is definitely more brick-burgundy; there is no purple in it.
Well, it looks like you and I definitely had our Bordeaux poured from the same barrel! 😂
