Wonder if it is a regional thing? Maybe there are several varieties of red delicious? But they all get the same name? In the area I live in now they are fairly bland and do not taste very good. But when I was a kid we would goto nebraska city and get a couple of bushels of them and those were very good otherwise we would not have bought that many.
If I go to the local produce market here in central NJ, when it's apple season they sell the local apples (in fact this particular market has it's own apple orchard).
If you hold a Red Delicious from Washington State and one from Jew Jersey, they are obviously different in shape. The Washington apple tends to be the boxy, tapered apple we're familiar with. The NJ Red Delicious is a globe, looking more like a Honeycrisp or Winesap in shape with the coloring of a Red Delicious. The NJ has a sweeter (although not significanty so) taste unlike the bland Washington (and others).
