If you want a hard RD type, but much better flavor, I recommend Cameo if Fuji doesn't fill the bill for you. Fuji is the ultimate hard, extremely sweet late apple in my book and you can eat it out of cool storage all winter. Cameo has a little more acid balance and has good storage life, like most modern varieties. Both of these do tend to biennial bearing though- at least in my cooler climate. A longer growing season helps.

Does Botner consider Double Red superior to Hawkeye?

RD grown in WA was already crap by the '60's by my memory. Back then my favorite sweet was Newtown, but they came from Santa Cruz and not WA.

September Fuji is the early I grow and it is much like the later version as advertised.

When I started my business here in the late '80's I asked a grower why he hadn't planted any Fuji's in his orchard. The crusty old guy said "why bother, to me it just tastes like Red Delicious used to". Of course, commercial growers are not necessarily connoisseurs.

I guess I'm trying to find the red delicous that the crusty old guy told you why bother planting Fuji's in place of. Doesn't anybody here grow RD anymore?

So true. They didn't just ship "Purdy" though...the fact is RD really IS pretty. Don't get me wrong I despise the apple, and to me, at least, it remains iconic of everything that went wrong in fruit production during that era. It is still a constant reminder of the vanity of consumers.

Having said all that however, I will admit that when I was a little kid the local Catholic school nuns would have candied apples as "prizes" for their Halloween events. Designed of course to draw children away from the pagan holiday and into salvation I guess. If you successfully bobbed for apples and got one you received a candied apple. That apple was of course RD and when candied, it was beyond fantastic as I remember it. I suspect that the tough skin and qualities that made it a "good shipper" made it prime for being candied as well. I've never made candied apples, but I guess you dip the apple into a hot bath of flavored and colored syrup. RD stands up to that...many others likely would not.
My point in all this blather? There may yet remain a place for RD.
Also...every Halloween I still think of those wonderful apples the Nuns gave out. Most of those Nuns (from what I'm told) were strict disciplinarians and were meaner than rattlesnakes.

I doubt it is better than Hawkeye if it isn't actually that. I've never heard of anyone claiming any new strains having better flavor than the original- but there's lots I haven't heard. No cardboard thick skin, at least. Might be Hawkeye- trees were planted around 70 years ago, I think.

Hawkeye was the best one...which isn't saying much.