I'm sick and tired of being able to find only three kinds of apples in my local stores (including the higher end ones like Whole Foods and Fresh Market most of the time):

1) Granny Smith (great for cooking).
2) Red Delicious (mealy texture, no flavor).
3) Whatever variety of the latest sweet "designer" apple, which ALL TASTE THE SAME. I don't care whether it's one of the Crisps (Honey, Cosmic, Ever, Whatever), Gala, Jazz, Envy, Cotton Candy, etc. They're all just sweet and all taste the same.

Why can't I find a good Jonathan? Hell - I'll even take Braeburn or McIntosh if I have to. Just give me a nice tart (but not Granny Smith tart), firm apple to snack on.

This is an especially vexing problem given my proximity to PA apple country - only a little over an hour or so to the North. They could be brought down here by the truckload on a daily basis. But no... I get to pick between Granny Smith, Red Delicious, and usually a dozen varieties of the sweet-designer-all-taste-the-same type.

-Rob

Not helpful but I like them”crisp all taste the same” apple. I hate red delicious, not even sure why they are so popular. I used to live right near you (Frederick) and agree you should be able to fin more variety.

I'm baffled as to why Red (Not) Delicious apples have stuck around as long as they have. Every single Red Delicious apple I've ever had was terrible, going back decades.

I've never liked Red Delicious. My favorite has always been the Golden Delicious, but I haven't been able to find them in quite a while now. Some of the newer yellow ones are OK when they're nice and fresh, if a little spendy.

When I lived in Wisconsin I visited an apple orchard. Tons of varieties I had never seen before. Ridiculously cheap and freshly picked.

The problem seems to lie with what varieties sell the best. Same with Cavendish bannanas.

The wife prefers Opal apples. They come and go from time to time at the local grocery store.

I hate the way apples are named. They need a grading system. We have about 15 different varieties in our market and have no idea what to buy. I just stick with Fuji.

You have to grow your own if you want a certain variety. Stark had under cost sales four or five years ago when the economy was bad.

Lottes Plaza still has some of the older varieties like McIniosh.

https://www.lotteplaza.com/weekly-sale/

At one time, I had over 30+ varieties of apples at the lot. The neighbors knew which was the best apple and would clean the tree in one night. Same with grapes until I took the chain saw to 36 vines and ended their stealing forever.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I'm baffled as to why Red (Not) Delicious apples have stuck around as long as they have. Every single Red Delicious apple I've ever had was terrible, going back decades.

Stark bought the Red Delicious apple for its taste and appearance a long time ago. It is hard to tell how many sub varieties have been developed since then. It does have one of the highest level of antioxidants. Others include Granny Smith, Fuji, Golden Delicious, and Gala.

I miss winesaps. You never see them any more.

Big fan of the Braeburn myself, but they are difficult to get around here. Honey Crisp are what I go with now.

A few years back I planted two each of Braeburn, Granny Smith, and Honey Crisp. Maybe, if I can keep the deer, elk, and chipmunks from killing them, I'll have my own fresh apples in ten years or so.

A quick Google had this to say about the Red Delicious apple's noticeable lack of deliciousness...

quote:

The Red Delicious boomed in popularity. By the 1940s it was the best-selling apple in the United States. Soon, however, selective breeding took its toll. “It was kind of this ‘gold-rush mentality’ with apples where if you found a really good one, you could market it,” says Yankee’s Amy Traverso, author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook.

Traverso explains that on any apple tree you have what are called “sports,” which are apples that might have a slightly different genetic expression than the rest. When Red Delicious apples mutated toward more consistent coloring — i.e., brighter reds, less striping — farmers favored them, because this was a marketable quality. And therein lies the problem.

“It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Traverso explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor.”

Traverso adds that as the Red Delicious was being bred to have more uniformity, it was also being bred to have thicker skin — “which was great when you were shipping things on trains,” she says, “but now you’re getting this mouthful of thick skin.”

By prioritizing aesthetics, apple growers were slowly destroying the Red Delicious’s deliciousness. As Traverso says: “They literally bred the flavor out of the apple.”

So basically, in their attempt to chase uniformly dark red apples with durability and cosmetic appeal, they bred all the flavor out of the Red Delicious over the years.

Still makes me wonder why it continues to hang on as a supermarket staple, since it has sucked for decades.

Love apples and haven't been able to find my favorite, McIntosh, in about a year...have been eating Gala and Red Delicious. I'm not a huge fan of the newer varieties...to me they are sweeter, but have less of the actual apple flavor.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
I'm not a huge fan of the newer varieties...to me they are sweeter, but have less of the actual apple flavor.

Exactly!

-Rob

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
I hate red delicious, not even sure why they are so popular.

Growing up in the "Heart of the Fruit Belt" in SW MI, I completely agree.

Yeah, RDs look great, you probably can ship them across the globe twice with no damage, and the marketing department chose them a fabulous name.

If only they didn't taste like sawdust dipped momentarily in weak apple juice......

Stark shows some of the older varieties. Their prices have gone from $20 to $75 for a dwarf tree. At least now they are offering some of the old varieties in dwarf. Semi-dwarf gets too big.

Arkansas Black was one of my favorite and was easy to keep into March. The mailman also liked it and would help himself at times.

https://www.starkbros.com/prod...it-trees/apple-trees

The best time to buy Stark trees is when they go on sale in April.

McIntosh apples are my favorite. Then I like golden delicious. Not as fond of the honey crisps, don’t know why they seem to be the rage, I’m lucky I can usually find different apples at my stores. We have Meijer stores in our area, and they usually have a decent variety on hand. Of course, I do get fresh from the apple orchard a few miles from us when they are ripening, usually mid sept. Those are the best, and he has a lot of variety too. Hope you can find your Jonathan apples.

Wow, reading Rogue’s post, yet another steaming pile of shit where marketing has taken over reality. Kind of like Christmas. People celebrate the fake marketing bullshit and forget the reality. God’s son got tortured to death to cleanse your soul. I had no knowledge of this prior that marketing of the apple is more important than the apple itself. But it’s not surprising really as that is most of society and everything involved with it.

Fuji and Envy for me.