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I think we do have tasty apples, but the red delicious certainly isn't one of them. Pink lady apples aren't bad. Same with oranges, the cheap ones (navelinas)

I think we do have tasty apples, but the red delicious certainly isn't one of them. Pink lady apples aren't bad. Same with oranges, the cheap ones (navelinas) are sweet but they taste of nothing and really are only good for juice. Sicilian red oranges on the other hand have a stronger taste, they are great. I have never tried a blind test but I am pretty sure I could pass it.

GioM 9y ago
A red delicious is an excellent apple - if you have it ripe off the tree. My parents have an older tree (20+ years) and a ripe apple from that is, quite frankly, amazing. Sweet, but not overly so. Crunchy, slight mineral flavour adding depth. Really nice. The problem comes when they're picked early and left to ripen off-tree or they're picked too late. Either way they become a mealy mess after a few days. However, in this condition, it still looks great and the dark colour disguises any obvious bruising. This is probably why it's so prevalent in retail chains.
- bonzini 9y ago
  It's not that common in Europe. In Italy, which has some of the biggest apple orchards, the cheap variety is the Golden Delicious or the Royal Gala. By the way, the mechanics of the organization behind those orchards are insane. It's an organization of thousands of farmers from the same valley (val di Non), with agronomists that decide when to harvest depending on the altitude and the variety. Apples brought a lot of wealth and infrastructure, since the valley roads had to be updated for the tricks. The organization even bought an old mine to have a 10 km tunnel at constant temperature in which to store apples.
sametmax 9y ago
> Pink lady apples aren't bad. This. This is the whole problem. Apples are not supposed to be "meh".
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  There are over 7,500 known cultivars of apple[1] many aren't suitable for eating raw, but grown for cooking and making cider, bust most are bred for eating. So there's bound to be a lot that you might find unappealing but have a sizeable following anyhow. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

GioM 9y ago

A red delicious is an excellent apple - if you have it ripe off the tree. My parents have an older tree (20+ years) and a ripe apple from that is, quite frankly, amazing. Sweet, but not overly so. Crunchy, slight mineral flavour adding depth. Really nice. The problem comes when they're picked early and left to ripen off-tree or they're picked too late. Either way they become a mealy mess after a few days. However, in this condition, it still looks great and the dark colour disguises any obvious bruising. This is probably why it's so prevalent in retail chains.

bonzini 9y ago
It's not that common in Europe. In Italy, which has some of the biggest apple orchards, the cheap variety is the Golden Delicious or the Royal Gala. By the way, the mechanics of the organization behind those orchards are insane. It's an organization of thousands of farmers from the same valley (val di Non), with agronomists that decide when to harvest depending on the altitude and the variety. Apples brought a lot of wealth and infrastructure, since the valley roads had to be updated for the tricks. The organization even bought an old mine to have a 10 km tunnel at constant temperature in which to store apples.

sametmax 9y ago

> Pink lady apples aren't bad. This. This is the whole problem. Apples are not supposed to be "meh".

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
There are over 7,500 known cultivars of apple[1] many aren't suitable for eating raw, but grown for cooking and making cider, bust most are bred for eating. So there's bound to be a lot that you might find unappealing but have a sizeable following anyhow. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple