My absolute favorite tomato is also a black tomato – a short determinate called Southern Night. I think it has an even deeper flavor than Cherokee Purple, and is less prone to cracking. You can get it from Tomato Growers Supply:
http://tomatogrowers.com/black.htm

I’m growing Marvel Stripe and Druzba this year. My plants are heavy with fruit, but nothing has ripened yet (I have a very shady yard, so this is normal).

I also love Sungold. My favorite red varieties are Stupice (a Czech heirloom) and Crnkovic (a Yugoslavian heirloom.) I’ve been growing Stupice for years now, in several gardens, and they’ve never failed to provide me with plentiful harvests of medium-sized, delicious fruit. Crnkovic was a fortuitous experiment last year, which produced the most delicious large red tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. Very few made it into the house, because I kept eating them straight from the vine.

Anyway, only one of my four varieties is heirloom – Pictsweet. They were the first non-cherry variety to produce, and look like they will continue gradually all summer, which is good. But they don’t taste like much, though that may partly be the fault of my soil.

The best in my garden this year, not counting my prolific and tasty cherries, is the overpopular Big Boy. It’s not producing tons, but its flavor is much better than the Pictsweet or Better Boys. And it reminds me of my grandmother’s tomatoes, Big Boy being one of her favorites.

That said, I may plant one Big Boy next year, but the rest will be less-vanilla varieties than I have now. Definitely a Cherokee Purple; beyond that, I’m perusing the Farmer’s Market to see what I might like.