There is a tendency when reading the reviews on this forum, to hold out for what folks say is the best tasting mango, so you can have the king in your yard. Tasting these new flavor grenade varieties from Gary and a few others has changed my opinion.
Basically, in my experience at Harry's, Gary's presentation, and tasting at Walter's is that there are good mangoes and elite mangoes (queue the elitism whispers)
When one discovers a truly elite mango, it no longer matters whether it will win the day....they're so good that you realize you want that in your life. Thus, great old varieties like Glenn, Haden, etc are no less appetizing than they always were, but no longer necessitate being planted out in one's yard IMO. The idea isn't to make sure you have the king, but to make sure you have all kings planted out. Having a yard with maha chanok, angie, lemon zest, coconut cream, sweet tart, fruit punch, and the like would make every summer that much better...no joke, these new mangoes are SO intense.
If one had a tasting of say the imaginary top 10 varieties on Earth, they would be impossible to rank. How would you rank coconut cream against lemon zest? Fruit punch against sweet tart. Plus, one of the world's best mangoes would finish last, yet likely be better-tasting than what most ppl on Earth will be planting
So, for me, I am now going to tastings with the idea of getting to either 1. try how good a variety I have tasted before is on that day/year/ripeness 2. Find out which mangoes don't make the cut, sort to determine which varieties are truly the best for my family's tastes and 3. to get a general idea what a variety tastes like, even if I have no intentions of planting it out. As previously stated in another thread, I had 3 mangoes yesterday (Fruit Punch, Seacrest, Sweet Tart) and 3 last week (PPK, Maha chanok, angie) that all got me to say: "Wow, I think that's the best mango I have ever tasted!" Can't even imagine trying to further sort them out---when they are all outstanding on their own.