Outstanding tomato for salsa and sauces. I found it takes only half the time of my other sauce tomatos to get a nice thick paste. In blind taste tests of tomato sauces San Marzano almost always comes out the winner. It is all but impossible to find real canned San Marzano tomatos at anything but gourmet stores. Look carefully at the ones in your store and you will probably find canned tomatos labeled San Marzano but they are most often followed by the word "type". I guess any paste tomato is a San Marzano "type"
San Marzanos offer a good argument for saving seed. They had become extinct except in two Italian gardens where the seed had been saved and passed down for generations. That's why San Marzanos are labeled as 1 or 2 depending on which garden the seed was gathered from. San Marzano 2 seems to be a bit larger and blockier.
