I’m grafting Sweet 16 this year, but have not tried it yet. Anyone that can tell me how it ranks?
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NovaMac scion wood and tree are still available at Maple Valley Orchards.
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This discussion so far deals with many apples that the average city resident will never be able to taste. Even you lucky people who have access to all of these unusual varieties probably can’t store most of them into late March or April. For me the best apple that I can buy now at a major grocery store is Pink Lady. It has the right combination of sweet and sour for my taste buds and retains its firm, crisp texture better than any other apple that I’ve tried. It’s far too hard when it first appears in December, but I’m usually still eating my own apples then.
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I made a mistake on a order an they canceled an refunded me right away. Nice people to work with.
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I’ll get my first Sweet Sixteen this year, if it doesn’t blight out before then. Taste reports vary from blockbuster complex/unique to weird to yagg. I pruned it open center, airy, no fertilizer to keep blight at bay as long as possible.
So far, my hands-down taste favorite is Evercrisp. Love it! Crisp, sweet, and a distinctive flavor all its own that I’ve not encountered in any other apple I’ve tasted.
Yoda
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The sweet 16s that I am getting up here are pretty special. Definitely has a cherry flavor, my wife said it reminded her of cherry jolly ranchers. The riper they become the more the black licorice/anise flavor shows up. Overall easily top 5 of the varieties ive gotten to eat off my own trees.
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I’d never heard of Swayzie, but the fact that your best were Freyberg and Rubinette means that you have good taste in apples 
Makes me want to try Swayzie.
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I think it’s a slight improvement over Honeycrisp and Fuji…it’s parents.
So, it’s become a favorite here.
I do still love tree ripened Red Delicious though.
I had a bunch of Envy a few months ago and I thought they were the best apples I ever tasted. I just had one a few minutes ago and it was just average. Honestly, it didn’t look like Envy or have the same skin or density, but it was sold as such. I sure hope it was an imposter, sold as an Envy. I thought the taste of the first Envy apples I had was absolutely mind blowing.
I’m thinking that’s a somewhat common experience. My first SweeTango was incredible, and I’ve never tasted anything close again. I used to like Honeycrisp, but I quit buying them because too many are just plain bad.
My theory is early adopters pay a premium to get into the market on a club apple, then later orchards who maybe aren’t as good over water and fertilize to get bigger, higher yields at reduced quality. That, or maybe it has to do with aging them less when they’re a new release?
Ashmeads Kernel is definitely my favorite. Northern spy , Macoun, Gold Rush, Pink Lady and Zestar are up there as well.
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Pixie crunch, King David and Golden delicious were hard to beat this year in south central Wisconsin.
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The main thing I like about it is how unique it is. Very nutty. It’s not as sweet and is not super crunchy so too many people it may not be so exciting.
This year the best apple I had was a Suncrisp which I had in storage until a few weeks ago. It was still pretty crisp and was incredibly aromatic and flavorful. Over 20 brix as well.
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Grav is definitely in my top 10, for whatever that’s worth. A perfectly ripe one is indeed hard to beat. My wife would likely describe it as her favorite in our little orchard, though she has a tendency to make this claim three or four times a season about different varieties as they become available. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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Also no mention of Kanzi or Snapdragon, which are great apples.
I just got a WineCrisp tree, which I don’t expect it to be the best tasting, but it should be a nice balance of tasty and easy to grow. Or at least that was my goal.
My problem is that I’ve never had the opportunity to eat a tree ripened Red Delicious — not that I remember.
GREAT TOPIC:
All off the tree in my back yard-ranked:
- Sweet Sixteen-when perfectly ripe taste like sweet black licorice. Unmistakable flavor of anise.
- Hudson Golden Gem: delicious combination of sweet apple and pear.
- Cortlandt: very underrated in my opinion, but very limited window to enjoy it. Sounds weird but to me, it tastes like something floral with a unique flavor and it’s fun that the apple never turns brown when you eat it.
- Golden delicious – underrated because the apple you get in a supermarket is not golden delicious it’s some over ripe version of something that was trucked from far away and might’ve once been a golden delicious. For example, I’ve never had a golden delicious that was perfectly yellow.
- Jonagold.-no reason this couldnt be first on the list, large to very large, beautiful apples really sweet I think a bit deeper flavor than spy, gold but spy gold also great with a little bit of an effervescent carbonated sort of experience in your mouth when you eat it.
- Honey crisp -the Apple is great because the texture experience is so incredible but it’s also a sweet apple the trees take a long time to establish themselves but once they do, they become somewhat vigorous the real problem is that almost all my apples get brown, right I get maybe one decent apple out of five crappy ones
NOTES:
macoun: I have a macaron tree the apples never ripen properly. Maybe it’s the location
liberty: . I’ve had it Road Side stands at. I’ve had a few really good ones when they were perfectly right but otherwise the window is so short I think it’s pretty average.
Ashmeads K: I have a tree it’s pretty productive, but had almost no productivity until recently, and I eat the apples off the tree, which I think is the mistake you’re supposed to let it store, but I don’t see it. All the fuss is about so obviously I haven’t had a good one yet.
Empire: yeah, a really good sweet apple, and the tree has a very interesting growth habit with really long branches that spread horizontally and never get to tall. Not one of my favorites, but a good apple certainly
red D: everyone says that if you have a really right one it’s so different from when you get in the supermarket which is true but I still don’t think it’s that good just my opinion. I just think it’s boring.
Westfield seek no further: taste a lot like a red delicious but a little more interesting. Really vigorous tree that suckers like crazy healthy tree small brownish apples that are really sweet with growing in your backyard because it’s easy to grow and doesn’t get wcab or collar rot. By the way, neither does red delicious so maybe they’re related
king of Tompkins county: absolutely love this Apple it’s huge, I had three trees, this was the proud of my Orchard, huge softball size red apples for the great flavor, but really susceptible to fire blight, all of your trees will get fire blight so hardly worth it. I’m glad I had them, but I wouldn’t plant again.
Spitz: I heard @alan say this was one of his favorites, I only had one tree, but it also got fire blight so I never got a decent Apple off of it so I can’t say. I think I had a few apples, and they had a beautiful orange color with speckles from what I recall.
Opalescent: could’ve made the list incredibly sweet, unique flavored apple, that is kind of a slow growing oddly shaped tree that never really establish itself but I got some good apples on it before the tree got collar rot and died. Worth trying has unique flavor.
-Baldwin: I have one treats, incredibly healthy and incredibly vigorous but none of the apples have ever been any good because it doesn’t get enough sun. It’s in a bad location. Also, I think because of the location it’s a magnet for plum curculio, or maybe it’s the variety is more susceptible. There’s certainly seems to be variances in susceptibility among species I don’t know that’s the case here. But I never got a good one.
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Sorry for all the typos, I’m a notorious dictator, and Siri is angry at me and purposely makes mistakes.
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