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I would disagree with that graphic on a few points.
- Red Delicious are not overly sweet. And if they are old at all, they are tasteless, flat, mealy-textured balls of wet flour. Honestly, I would drop them a slot or two, if not more. They have had all the sweetness and good texture bred out of them over the last century in order for them to look pretty on a shelf or in a bowl. They are the most trash apple you can imagine.
- Yellow Delicious are quite sweet, but have a frighteningly short shelf life and bruise like heck. They are sweetest if they suffer from “water core”, which is what happens when they remain on the tree too long and you get really cool and possibly even borderline freezing temperatures. They get old really fast, and their skin starts wrinkling very quickly.
- A caveat to the “Yellow Delicious” name is that there is a new variety of yellow-coloured Galas called - yup - Golden Galas. These have a much better shelf life and resistance to bruising than Yellow Delicious, but aren’t quite as sweet. They make great apple juice, tho, if you are into juicing and have large-scale equipment (beyond a countertop juicer).
- I would move Honeycrisp even ahead of Golden Delicious, and possibly even Golden Galas. It can be very sweet, especially in places with long summers like the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. It does, however, have quite an acidic bite along with that sweetness, which might be why it’s so far down the list here.
- I would move Gala down beneath Jonagold and Honeycrisp, but above Red/Yellow Delicious. Golden Galas would be above it, maybe even by a slot or two.
- I have never had a fresh-off-the-tree Fuji, so I cannot knock it down from first place. But Ambrosia certainly sits in first or second place. It is by far my favourite apple.
Source: am orchardist, in the Okanagan Valley. I specialize in Apples, the sweeter the better. There are tens of thousands of named varietals, but only about a dozen are commercially sold in North America to any great extent, mainly due to these varietals excelling in ease of transport, shelf life, and robustness against bruising. The decline of the Golden Delicious on supermarket shelves is a direct result of its lack of robustness and the emergence of the Golden Gala as an intentionally-bred replacement.
Definitely agree on your points. Red delicious are awful unless they're super fresh and still crisp, and even then they're just kind of blah.
I would argue as well that the tartness of a pacific rose is nowhere near that of a granny smith.
For a while there I could find them in the local supermarket and then they disappeared. Made me quite sad, as they're a great apple.