Anyone who has ever bitten into a sandwich and, on second thought, removed that sad, pink, watery slice of tomato will appreciate Tomatoland, Barry Estabrook’s new book about Florida’s tomato trade. Estabrook’s detective work started years ago on the road in South Florida. As he was driving behind a produce truck, he saw a bright green fruit break free, strike the highway and emerge intact. The food writer was shocked to see that this was a tomato, usually a soft, red fruit that splits and oozes at the slightest rough handling.

The mysterious tomato led Estabrook from South Florida farms to rural Peru in search of answers. In his travels, Estabrook discovered that year-round demand for the summer fruit has created a troubled tomato industry in Florida. Farmers pump the soil full of pesticides to combat the challenges of our inhospitably humid climate, and, since vine-ripened tomatoes are too delicate to withstand cross-country shipment, they’re picked well before they’re ripe and gassed with ethylene to turn them red. In Tomatoland, Estabrook uncovers a trade fueled by low prices and, alarmingly, incidents of slave labor – all here in the Sunshine State. We called Barry at his Vermont home for some answers of our own.

Orlando Weekly: I’ve been reading interviews that you’ve done for the book and reviews of the book, and you’ve likened your relationship to tomatoes to Proust and his madeleine. Can you describe that association?

Barry Estabrook: Well, I’m talking about a good tomato, a real garden-ripe tomato – not a winter tomato. Proust tasted a madeleine, and it brought back all these memories to him. Tomatoes are a thing that I really do associate with pleasant memories from when I was younger. My father was a businessman who spent a lot of time traveling around the country, and I wasn’t a great athlete or anything, but the one thing we sort of bonded over were tomatoes. Wherever we lived and whatever the circumstances were, he’d plant a few tomatoes – half a dozen tomato plants. I can remember their smell. I remember the leaves, and their little white roots when he took them out of the container to transplant them. I remember in the heat of summer pulling a few tomatoes off the vine and eating them, and then bringing some in and serving them with a little salt and pepper. And mayonnaise.

The way you talk about it, about how you can taste all the elements in the tomato, sounds like drinking wine.

A good tomato, to me, is like a good red wine. Its flavors are very, very complex. That’s what I like. The sweetness and the tartness play off of each other, and all the other elements that are in a good-tasting tomato are very similar to drinking a good burgundy.

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