I grew up in the midwest making applesauce from winesaps. It was awesome and came out a lovely pink color. I’ll look for the Stayman and Arkansas Black next grocery trip. 
My favorite is probably King David, but they’re really hard to find these days. Grimes Golden’s great for a sweeter apple. Generally, I have to settle for Winesaps. Unfortunately, I bought a peck yesterday (from an orchard in N. GA) that are mushy- time for a pie.
If anyone’s reading this thread and has never gotten apples from an orchard instead of a grocery store, you really need to go if there are any near you. Even Red Delicious apples can be good from an orchard.
Gravenstein, Winesap, are both very good, but I like Northern Spy the best. I do not know how to descripe the tast of a good Northern Spy, very complex. Last year I got a couple of bushels and a ate the last one in late March. This year the local orchard only had a small bag available.
It’s times like this when I’m very happy to live here in Northern California. A couple weeks ago I just happened to count while I was in the produce aisle at our local supermarket, and there were 16 different varieties of apples available.
Of course, I also now feel bad about myself because we only purchase 3 or 4 different ones…
In the Apple Eden of the New York State and Pennsylvania, Macouns and Winesaps and Rhode Island Greening for baking. In the Red Delicious Wasteland of the Pacific Northwest, though, Honeycrisps are absolutely the best (but still slightly too sweet for me).
Honeycrisp, York, and Braeburn (which is the only one I can actually get at the supermarket usually)
I’m working my way through a basket of Fujis and they’re quite good. Inexpensive too. Got them for seventy cents a pound. I will take even a fresh, crisp anything (even a boring Red D) over a mealy HoneyCrisp. I can’t stand mealy apples.
We were out at a u-pick orchard this past weekend and picked a bunch of Goldrush - excellent crisp texture and taste (on the tart side; we’ll see if it mellows out during storage, as it’s reputed to be an excellent keeping apple). Also got a few Suncrisp which were very good.
Honeycrisp also rates highly with me.
When my own mini-orchard gets its act together and starts producing decent fruit, I’ll have a few classics and modern hybrids to compare with these.
this is a very nice apple, cross between the Red delicious and McIntosh
all the best qualities of both
Empire all the way. Every fall I fill up a carton at a U-Pick orchard in Julian and eat those things until I run out around Christmas time. The Jonathans are pretty good too. For some reason (drought year?) the usually reliable Golden Delicious weren’t so great this year.
There are actually tons of orchards in the Midwest… but the drought this year hurt several of the crops.
My preference is:
- Fuji
- Gala
- Opal
(someone had to do it… I’ve never even had an Opal Apple)
My wife and daughter will be at Jungle Jim’s this weekend so I may have them pick up a few of the others mentioned.
Late frost got them here before the drought did.
I just returned from a vacation in Washington state, where I was happy to find Honeycrisps for .99 a pound. They were locally grown and unwaxed. I bought eight ginormous ones and ate them up over the course of our four-day stay. They’re my favorite apple, and they were of the best quality up there.
When I was a nipper, Jonathans and Granny Smith were the most popular varieties in Australia. However, in the last 20 years, Jonathans have been overtaken by sweeter varieties, such as Pink Lady and Gala.
I prefer the Jonathan - a subtle mix of sweet and tart. Slightly astringent, so your teeth feel really clean afterwards.
I’m typing this about 2 miles from the site of Granny Smith’s orchard (Eastwood, NSW Australia). The last original apple tree died a few years ago - all the apple and stone-fruit orchards of north-west Sydney are buried under suburbia now.