Melbourne's tastiest tomato is ...

Nothing brings joy to the hearts of gardeners and chefs like a great-tasting tomato plucked recently from the plant. So it was no surprise to find green thumbs and foodies swarming all over The Digger's Club stand at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden show last week, as more than 20 varieties of tomatoes were put to the taste test.

The Digger's Club, established by Clive Blazey in 1978, is known in Victoria for bringing back from oblivion fruit and vegetables varieties spurned in recent decades by farmers, supermarkets and greengrocers.

Forty judges drawn from food and gardening circles, including chef Matt Wilkinson (Pope Joan, Brunswick East), Cameron Smith (Triple R's 'Eat It' radio program) and former Epicure editor Rita Erlich were on-hand to put 22 new and old tomato varieties through their paces. The tomatoes, which were labelled, were rated by taste, texture and appearance, with the most points going to taste.

And the winner? Backyard vegie gardeners take note: the prize for tastiest overall was a tie between two cherry tomatoes - pink bumble bee and tommy toe - both scoring 72 out of a possible 100.

Coming in at second place was the green zebra (71), followed by the red and black tomato (70) and the wapsipinicon peach (69).

In bad news for those without a backyard vegie patch, in each of the four tomato categories (cherry, salad, slice/large and cooking/saucing) the contender commonly available in supermarkets scored lowest. The "glasshouse truss" scored 49, the common cherry scored 44 points, the roma tomato scored 39 and the tomato variety called "field grown" in many shops scored 34 points.

Top five rankings: 2015 Melbourne tomato taste test (scores out of 100)

72 Pink bumble bee and tommy toe
71 Green zebra
70 Red and black
69 Wapsipinicon peach
68 Sunrise bumble bee