Duchess of Oldenburg is one of the antique apples in our Piper's orchard in Seattle http://www.pipersorchard.org Decent taste.
Even better taste (to me) and also considered early ripener with good disease resistance is the William's Pride.
Lack of flavor can sometimes be an issue with early varieties. Here are a couple which definitely have good flavors:
Alkmene - Cox crossed with Duchess of Oldenburg.
I also like Akane - Jonathan crossed with Worcester Pearmain, a well-known early-season apple in England.
My Gravenstein isn’t ‘red,’ it’s a classic ‘older cultivar,’ but for an early apple it has one of the most complex flavor blends I know of. It is a ‘triploid’ and will need pollen from two different early blooming sources; mine are a graft of ‘Transparent’ and an apple named ‘Early Red.’ Both pollinators are far more consistent than the Grav, but as mentioned, their flavor is nearly nonexistent in comparison…
I like my Gravenstein. It doesn't store and there is a very small time period to harvest each apple. They don't hang on the tree after they ripen. But tasty fruit with decent crisp juicy texture, and they make the best dried apples.
In my opinion, Yellow Transparent is a waste of space. I cook those into my dog food.
I just planted a Zestar. It's reputed to be both early and tasty. I've heard it will even store fairly well. I'm looking forward to tasting the apples.
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