Cox is delicious but not easy to grow well. Unless you have the right conditions it could be disappointing. "Unfortunately England's greatest apple is not particularly easy to grow. It needs a relatively cool maritime climate and is also prone to diseases." I don't think your continental climate would suit it. https://www.orangepippin.com/varieties/apples/coxs-orange-pippin

Good info, Floral - thanks.

I won't make an apple pie without at least half granny smith. I know nothing about growing, however. Crabapples grow well enough here, and are usefull, but that's another story. I like pink lady's too. And honeycrisp. And the good fujis. Recently, I've tried a number of less known apples in the last few years, but it becomes obvious why the famous ones got that way, both for flavor and texture.

I like to bake with Granny Smith, but don't like them for fresh eating.

For eating out of hand I tend to like Gala, Fuji and Honeycrisp. Cosmic Crisp is also good and a newer variety to me. For baking I do like Granny Smiths.

When I need to buy apples, I look for Pippins at the local farms, or Granny Smiths at the store.

I like Jonagold for eating and baking. It's more tart than Honeycrisp, Gala and others that are available in the supermarket. It is not too hard to bite into so it makes great applesauce, yet holds its shape in a pie.

Crispins are good too. :)

Arkansas black is supposed to be good. We planted one 2 summers ago and got 2 apples this year. They are different in that you need to store them for a few months before eating to finish ripening. They are indeed uninteresting off the tree and basically taste like nothing.

These days, Pink Lady, before that Honey Crisp, before that Braeburn, and before that Granny Smith, and Winesap many years ago.

What do we do to apple varieties that they seem delicious but become insipid?

I do like to use Granny Smiths for baking and Indo love tart, but sometimes they seem very un- ripe to be eaten.

Jonagold isn't bad, but it can't pollinize other apples.

"What do we do to apple varieties that they seem delicious but become insipid?"

It might be trying to breed them to be sweeter. Or breeding them for desirable traits other than flavor (e.g. disease resistant, size, shape) and in the process the flavor is lost.

I like a tart apple. My favorite for eating are Braeburn and Honey Crisp. For pies and baking I like Braeburn, Honey Crisp, McIntosh, Winesap and Jonagold. I've never been fond of the Granny Smith for a pie, even though many recommend it for baking and pies.

ETA: I also like Empires, but haven't seen them recently.

Mine is McIntosh and so far I haven't found them in any stores in our area. Second favorite is Granny Smith.

We used to eat Cortland apples growing up in NY state. Can't get them on the west coast.

Pink Lady for preference, but I get Granny Smiths for cooking and use them in Waldorf salad and occasionally eating.

I like a crunchy, juicy apple with flavor. Honeycrisps are often very tasty. But after biting into duds of former favored varieties a few times, I tend to end up moving on to other offerings. Braeburn, Fiji, McIntosh, Jonagold, Gala have faded with disappointed offerings. Various crisps and tangos haven't impressed often. And the highly touted Pink Ladies---I've never found one that tasted even decent.

I try many different varieties that become available here, but they all seem to fall under hit and miss. My current strategy is to buy one or two of each that looks as if they would be good, and then go back and buy more of the best among those current offerings.

Yellow Transparents are the first apple of the year. They don't keep at all but they make the best applesauce you've ever tasted. They are very, very hard to find, but I just found a little market that has them for 3 weeks. And they sell out fast.

We like Cameo apples. Just sweet enough and very crisp.

laceyvail, I was looking to grow Yellow Transparents but couldn't find them at the time and bought/planted Lodi instead. They are exactly as the YT! Very early apples (I start picking them the 2nd/3rd week in July in NY), and lousy keepers, but they make great applesauce and apple desserts!!!

I’ve always loved Northern Spy too, but don’t ever see them available at the local farms anymore.

"My current strategy is to buy one or two of each that looks as if they would be good, and then go back and buy more of the best among those current offerings."

That is a good strategy, I've done that and with other fruits, too (especially peaches and nectarines). Let's face it -- stuff in the grocery can be pretty tasteless. When I'm in the city I stop at the local produce market, they carry a lot of locally-grown stuff, the picked-ripe Michigan apples I can get there are a knock-your-socks-off flavor explosion. My trees aren't old enough to bear yet.

I've been unimpressed with HoneyCrisp and just tried Cameo, but it tasted like nothing really. Perhaps it wasn't ripe enough but neither Elery nor I were impressed. I"ve been similarly unimpressed with Zestar and Cosmic Crisp. (shrug) To each their own.

For eating out of hand I like something relatively new called Blondee, nearly impossible to find, although Grandpa's Orchards says it's a yellow gala, but firmer. It can be used as a pollinator, as it's a mid season blooming apple. I'll go for Pink Lady or Jonagold as second choices. For baking I go with Grandma's favorites: Empire, Cortland, Wolf River, Ida Red. Apple Sauce? MacIntosh or Yellow Delicious or more commonly a mix. Just for eating? Mutsu/Crispin or the above mentioned Blondee. Am I going to press cider? I want them all, the more the merrier!

I'm one of THOSE people who aren't crazy about apples, I prefer pears. And yes, I know, I'm in the minority so don't take my word for any of this, although I do live in Michigan and tend Dad's old Red Delicious and Wolf River. If I planted anything it would be Blondee because I can find the others at local orchards.

Annie

I prefer pears over apples probably because I'm so fussy about apples -- there's so many apples I just don't like because I get an aftertaste or they're tasteless and it's pretty easy to get a good pear because you're supposed to pick they before they ripen, unlike other fruit.

My favorite pear is Forelle. Ridiculously expensive, and fewer places offering them than used to. So I finally bought myself a Forelle tree. I might be dead by the time it bears, but at least I'm giving it a try. Seckel are good, too, but sweeter, and also hard to find -- also have a Seckel tree. I love good 'ol Bartlett, can't go wrong there, but I don't have a Barlett tree because they're super-easy to find, not expensive, and pretty decent at the store.

mxk, I've not had Forelle and I adore a nice Seckel. I do have a Seckel tree but it is "only" 6 years old and not yet bearing fruit. I also have a Red Sensation and a Starking Delicious, which is an "improved" Bartlett. They are all planted at approximate the same time and none are bearing, so I'm forced to buy from the local farmer's market until mine get around to giving me some fruit. I also have a white sweet cherry as well as a red one, a Stanley prune plum and a Green Gage plum and the only fruit I"ve gotten so far are the Stanley plums. (sigh) And so I wait....

Meanwhile my Red Delicious trees are loaded and they are nice, crisp and sweet, right off the tree. For about 2 weeks. Then they lose crispness and just become sweet and mealy. Why Dad planted two of them I'll never understand.

Annie

Red delicious for the first few weeks have that distinct flavour which I love then they turn into something entirely different but if caught before they go mealy can be nice as well. They are showing up less and less at the fruit shops and supermarkets these days. It’s become a surprise to see them.

I like the tartness of Grannie Smiths for cooking but like the sweetness of Golden Delicious for eating , though those are also becoming hard to find.

The red delicious we got from Wahington when I was young were perfect. They don't seem to exist any more. There's a label saying it, but they're awful.

For the last couple uears, I have been finding Envy appleas. My husband loves them, but they seem to be very seasonal, and I can only find them about 25% of the time.

Motts.

I like crisp or crunchy apples preferably from a local orchard. I am picky about texture when eating fresh. I just made a batch of applesauce with apples that were around too long. When I lived in the Mid-Atlantic Stayman Winesaps and Keepsakes were favorites. Here is a short story about an apple that comes from the old farmstead where I grew up and secondarily my dad.

https://www.outonalimbapples.com/varieties/canadian-strawberry

I just cut a bunch of small apples for pie. The granny smiths were obvious, and even the flesh is green. The others are a mix but all the same speckled red skin--impossible to tell apart-- and various shades of the same range of apply yellow flesh. I know there were honeycrisps (good ones, unlike the ones Annie described), pink ladys, at least one fuji, and maybe something else. They all looked the same, but I nibbled the cores and they were all very different! Good, though, even though a couple were looking a bit wrinkly.

agmss, that's an interesting article. One of our local farmer's markets has several old/heritage/vintage/historical/etc. apple trees. One of the varieties they sell is "Chenango Strawberry", which they say originated in Chenango, New York, in the 1850s or so. Not Maine, but at least the right locale, kind of.

Annie

Annie, it made we smile to see you mention Ida Reds—- I almost believed this is a mythic apple. I’ve never had one but a friend I used to cook with described them as the most magically delicious.

It seems like new varieties appear so frequently now and older sorts disappear. I never see winesap, mcintosh, or jonathan in grocery stores anymore. I live in Albemarle county, home of the Albemarle Pippin, Ginger Gold, and Vintage Virginia apples

lisaam, Ida Red absolutely exists, LOL. They are still pretty common here, but I see them less and less, so they will probably go away in the next few years. (sigh) The "mythic" apples for me are Gravenstein and Northern Spy. Those were the apples Grandma always wanted for pies, but I don't ever see them here. The big orchards used to have them but they bulldoze out the old trees to make way for the new popular types like HoneyCrisp because that's what people want and what sells. I get that, they have to make a living.

Annie

I usually buy Pink Lady for eating but just bought a bag of organic cosmic crisp from Trader Joe's. Pretty wonderful!

Alice Waters frequently recommended Gravenstein apples. Maybe the request for when in heaven is heritage fruit at its peak to sample.😇

Man, now I want to try all these different ones! But I only am going to get one or two new trees, so I do have to choose. I wish I could find some of these varieties for sale locally so I could try before I buy, but that's probably a pipe dream.

mxk, I don't know where you are in Michigan, but we have a couple of local orchards here that still sell apples out of big wooden bins that come from their orchards, you pick out your own half bushel or whatever, and can "mix and match". I'm north of Grand Rapids and stopped at one on my way there for apples a couple of days ago. Their Facebook page/ad (Nelson's Farm Market in Grant, Michigan) says they have Cameo/Cortland/Empire/Fuji/Gala/Golden Delicious/Granny Smith/HoneyCrisp, Ida Red/JonaGold/JonaMac/MacIntosh/Mutsu/Northern Spy/Red Delicious. I'm going to have to go back for the Northern Spy! They are $15 a half bushel and are also available in quarter bushel size.

Annie

I’m a Fuji boy.

SWMBO does not eat apples, though she will make me an apple pie under protest. She has had too many apples for one lifetime. She grew up in Yakima WA.

Well, I did see Cosmic Crisp at the grocery so tried one. It was indeed crisp, nicely juicy but not overly so, but sadly it didn't have much flavor. Not unusual for a grocery store apple, but still a bland Pink Lady or McIntosh is more flavorful than the C.C.

Interesting about the Cosmic Crisp. The ones I got at TJ's were spectacular. I made a winter cabbage salad along with some beef barley soup to take to friends who both have covid. They have a small apple orchard, not sure the varieties they grow. I put a CC in the salad and she texted me to ask what the apple was because it was so "special" - her words. Maybe you got a bad one, or maybe it just didn't suit you. I do love a good Pink Lady but prefer Braeburn over all of those.

I hope that you have good luck with them! I was curious about their availability and was shocked to find that you can have fresh Northern Spy apples delivered to you! This is a link: Northern Spies