Sorry, forgot to answer. I’ve Honey Crisp for several years. It has a strong biennial tendency. The texture is what I like - breaking crunch.
Taste varies from year to year. Some years, they were excellent, sweet and juicy. Other years they were disappointingly watered down, bland. The down years often due to bad weather, too much rain and/or not enough sun leading to its ripening time.
These days I prefer apples with more complex taste than HC.
Thank you for sharing that info about your homegrown HCs. That sounds more like what I would have expected, to be honest, so I don’t know how to account for the “pineapple-y” Honeycrisps that have been turning up around here lately. (They’re still almost too sweet for my taste, but with a definite tang to them, too.)
I remember there was one year that my HC tasted so bland that after a couple of bites I had to throw it away. I usually do not throw fruit away but that year’s HC was so bad. In short, where I am, HC’s quality has been very inconsistent.
Chestnut Crab is my favorite.
Though, at the orchard I worked at, on a good year, a fresh-off-the-tree McIntosh was hard to beat.
I like many cultivars but cinnamon spice is my favorite.
Hi! Any one knows how good is Black McIntosh? Thank’s!
I don’t have an extensive apple repertoire like many of you and have gone through the usual McIntosh, Red Delicious, Granny Smith phases growing up. Then I got onto Cortland which I liked for eating as well as pie, and then Macoun, which is still a favorite. I tried Honeycrisp but felt it wasn’t worth the price so stopped buying it. My fav now is Empire - tart with just enough sweet and great texture. Keeps well, too, in my home fridge. I have Golden (not Delicious), Quincy, and Wolf River trees I inherited with this property and am only keeping them pruned and tried some grafting so far, no serious apple-growing. I did try the Wolf River (they’re HUGE) and it was extremely tart - serious pucker material, so I’m guessing it is a good pie apple as it wasn’t juicy either. I need to get out more and try some of these others; I have some serious orchards here in NH and am looking forward to visiting more of them next fall.
As for what I can buy at the stores, over-all HC is my favorite; and I eat a lot of them. I think it really echo’s the summary of this thread. Which to me is apples of the same variety have so much…variety. In my preference texture is a major player, but texture alone won’t cut it. I feel like there is a lot of genetic variation in the HC crops. I won’t go the store and buy HC over anything else just because they have them. First of all, the large sized HC are a no go, I will 100% choose a different variety before one of those. The ones shaped like a Gala are not usually the best either. I feel the medium/small ones that are sort of squatty shaped carry the properties I like best on average and there is still great variety in flavor of what I pick out. Some will have the pineapple type flavor, often times I pick up on a distinct anise flavor, and there are other flavor that I have yet to find a name for. I think the ones with the anise flavor tones are my favorite. I still get some that are bland, or insipid, or too sweet. That’s my HC summary. Oh, and I don’t like Red Delicious, I would rather eat a banana.
Otherwise, I think the Esopus Spitzenbergs I have tried are a fine tasting apple. None of my own trees are producing yet, so I look forward to adding my thoughts on those varieties in the future.
I didn’t get any of those this year. I haven’t shopped as often, due to the pandemic. 
But i really liked those last year, and the year before. Especially the ones i bought early on their season. They had an interesting flavor that i enjoyed.
It’s so hard to pick just one. And I care about texture, and can’t really separate that from taste… But here goes…
Perhaps the best apple I ever had was a macoun that the wind had knocked into a tall stand of grass. In general, a good macoun is excellent but doesn’t have the very best flavor, but this one was perfectly ripe, perfectly fresh, and fabulous.
Macintosh doesn’t keep, and gets soft and mealy, but has reliably excellent flavor. I buy macintosh apple sauce.
I once had an overripe liberty grown in sunny new Jersey. The texture was horrible, all mealy. But the flavor knocked me over. It would have been a great addition to cider.
Perhaps my favorite apple is ashmeads kernal, which is incredibly sweet, incredibly tart, crunchy, and has a nice flavor. Golden russet isn’t as tart, and is strictly less tasty to my palate, but it’s a decent substitute when I can’t get my ashmeads.
I was really impressed with crimson crisp this year, which was almost as tasty, and is larger, prettier, and easier for me to buy.
For cooking, I love Jonathan. It develops a rich, complex flavor when it cooks and if it’s fresh and not overcooked, it keeps some shape. Later in the season, idared is a nice cooking apple. And caville blanc can make a really nice tart, too.
Ida Red is the most consistent cropper of late apples I know, thinned or not. I’m surprised I almost never read its name here.
I think it’s an old apple, and doesn’t have any one exciting feature. It’s a solid eating apple though, as well as being a good cooking apple. It’s not “the best”, but late in the season it’s often the best I can get, and better than anything from the supermarket.
I haven’t gotten around to including it in my own orchard for the reasons you mention, but I’m rethinking that because a lot of the apples I store we use for cooking.
RE: Ida Red…one of a handful of varieties everyone grows around here…always have…
Re: Baldwin…what do you think of them ?..I had one which seemed comparatively healthy and trouble free in my high CAR pressure area, so I put 2 more in this Fall…have never tried one (that I know of )
At it’s best, I think it’s one of the best, but it depends on location a great deal. Tom Burford said to me once that it used to be one of the best performing varieties in VA until it got too warm. It needs to ripen in cool weather, apparently, and in well drained soil to reach highest quality. Even in NY, in wet soils it can be mediocre.
It ripens over a long period and needs to be picked right before it drops for immediate eating, but sooner for storage.
Idared has been difficult for me, grafts haven’t taken or they don’t survive. However, that may have been the G.210 I was using as a root stock. I now have it on M.111 and it is doing better, but not very vigorous so far.
It’s a spurry apple that tends to often have flower buds on one year wood. Such wood can easily runt out, but keep removing flowers.
I do see a pattern there, I mean , aside from the fact there are some close genetic relations amongst those apples…would you say they are all apples with more or less of a tropical fruit characteristic in the flavour profile ? They are all ones I have considered…and I believe you were the person who encouraged me to get the Belle de Boskoop ? I planted 2 this fall, i thought I had read somewhere they are a sibling of Karmijn…but then I was later unable to find evidence of that when I went looking…
I was asking about taste only, but must admit texture is very important to me also, I make an exception only for russets which, if not fresh off the tree(when they are not at their best anyway) the texture is less than ideal…in fact , texture is why Mutsu is one of my favorite apples, …and because a Mutsu is basically a meal 