1) Niagara Black just keeps ripening very flavorful jammy figs
 2) Unknown Dalmatia from Nelson . Wow  
 http://nelsonsfigs.blogspot.ca/2014_09_01_archive.html
 3) Italiano ( may be colasanti dark )
 4) LSU Scott's Black was the biggest surprise , beautifully shaped figs no splitting , very good flavour profile

Coop:Nero 600 m,was ripening one by one,here for about 20 days.
Yet I do not have a net on it,and I could not get one ripe for myself,Squirrels get them all.
The Fall was cool with cold nights so yes,there is a reason it is only ripening one at a time.

My favourite fig for taste is John P.'s Niagara Black. 
He shared a very ripe one with me and it was amazing.  It was sweet and packed with taste.  You wish you had a basket of them and an 1 hr to savour them.
The runner up for taste was a CDD blanc I tasted thanks to Adrianno.

• All good. Top tasting figs here probably a 4 way tie, out of the list of about two dozen below: Janice, various Mount Etna types, Malta Black, and Paradiso GM #9
• Others in my family preferred Improved Celeste to the rest.
• Most productive: Mount Etna Unknown, followed by Improved Celeste, then some of the other Mount Etnas, LSU Purple, and Malta Black.
• Next year it looks like Ronde de Bordeaux will produce a flood of high quality fruits, probably along with a number of additional cultivars.
• Three indispensable cultivars for productivity and taste in cool areas: a good Mount Etna strain, Malta Black, Improved Celeste. These produce well and taste great. (Next year, I expect that Ronde de Bordeaux will similarly prove itself, and hopefully others.) Those three cultivars also have distinctly different tastes, ranging from grape-ish, tangy (Mount Etnas) to strawberry-ish, smooth (Malta Black) to peach-ish, sugary (Improved Celeste). Cherry-ish here and there and dynamite sugar glaze in all depending on degree of ripeness. Plus these three seem to be among the best for ripening fruit after winter die-back to ground.
• I expect that each year will continue to produce different but not wholly different results. For example, the Mount Etnas, Improved Celeste, and Janice were all at or near the top tasting last year too (and most productive) whereas Malta Black and Paradiso GM #9 were not old enough to ripen fruit last year unlike this year.

• Mount Etna Unknown August 20 pot 1 year old

• Hunt 23 pot several yrs old

• Martin's Unknown 24 pot / breba several yrs

• Marseilles Black 31 pot 1 yr

• Mount Etna Unknown September 1 ground 1 yr by cement drive

• Improved Celeste PP 2 pot 2 yrs

• Celeste PP 3 ground 2 yrs in open

• Petite Negri  7 pot / breba 2 yrs

• LSU Purple 11 pot 2 yrs

• California Brown Turkey 11 pot 1 yr

• Alma 12 pot / breba? 2 yr

• Improved Celeste 13 ground 2 yrs by cement & house

• Conadria 19 pot 2 yrs

• Negronne 20 pot 3 yrs

• Hardy Chicago 20 ground 1 yr in open

• Violette de Bordeaux 21 pot 2 yr

• Malta Black 28 pot 1 yr

• Takoma Violet 28 pot 1 yr

• Binello 29 ground 1 yr in open

• Gino's Black 29 pot 1 yr

• Janice Kadota 29 pot 3 yr

• Desert King October 1 pot 1 yr

• Salem Dark 4 pot 1 yr

• Paradiso GM #9 10 pot several yrs

• Aldo 15 pot 1 yr

My second year RDB was very tasty and produced about 75 fig which are all done. My Bronx unk is still ripening figs and they are delicious ,VDB is right behind them.

@ Tyler, wow thanks for posting your information. Very interesting how well Janice performed

@ Herman, the big surprise for me was that my Mt Etna types that are usually the best performing here in North Jersey dropped most of there figs, I can't figure out what happened and ideas why??

  Thanks,
   Peter

Tyler:If you grow in pots,That is the reason,they missed something:mineral ,nutrients,Pot too hot,etc.
If you grow in ground,then it only drops because of ,too cold climatic conditions,in the affected year.
Celeste drops here every year but it is because it is not fully self fertile but Mount Etna type fig,should not drop.

Herman, yes you are correct they are in pots and I suspect they may have gotten to hot or not enough water at some point. But LSU Black & Dalmatie are also in pots but made excellent figs again.

  Thanks,
   Peter

Best for me this year so far is JH Adriatic followed by LSU Black. I have a few Preto and CDDN trying to ripen now. We'll see how their flavor is in this less than ideal weather.

For those with bad results with pots... I highly recommend trying the sub-irrigation method of watering.  I used Pro-Mix BX with a heaping tablespoon of Osmocote slow release fertilizer mixed in.  I did this in the spring, covered the top of the bucket to prevent rain from washing out the nutrients and I had lots of figs from trees that started from the size of a pencil.  Abebereira, Preto, Salem Dark, Italian Honey, Excel, Atreano...
I know I'll be root-pruning a lot of these trees over the winter, as the roots grew way out of the bottom.  Hope this helps.

Best taste was Battaglia off of a small young tree.

Best fig over-all was Malta Black. It ripened every single fig on the tree, flavor and fig quality were very consistent.

Still have some more to go, quite a few VdBs, UDGs, Carinis, a few others here and there, and hopefully will get to taste Smith.

FiggyFrank, thanks for the tips on the potted plants, I will try that next season!

  Peter

For me the first ripening one makes big impression as long as it is sweet and this year again it was Florea!
What surprised me in my Northern climate was that Rond de Bordeaux ripening as the second in order. Good surprise and I hope it stays like this. These were followed by Blue Celest and Vista and Lyndhurs White.

For other varieties I have to ask the squirrels. My mistakes were that I will leave figs for just one or two more days for ripening but the squirrel got them as soon as good for them. Somehow the raccoon family disappeared after breaking my Early Red Haven peach tree for fruits and the squirrel took over. I will be taking care of them squirrel next year. That is a promise to myself

For me, my best tasting fig was Violet de Bordeaux and Negretta. Both had a unique flavor with the VDB having a tightly packed inside.

Malta Black and LSU Tiger are my second best.

My worst fig was LSU Purple. Last year it was "just good" but for some reason this year it was completely tasteless.

Frank hi
Root pruning over the winter seems like a good idea.

Any of the VERY few I was able to beat the birds, opossum, raccoon's etc, to. :-)

I only have a very limited amount of varieties which I bought last year:they are in pots and I picked my first ripe figs from Danny's Delight followed by Sal's EL and MBVS.These varieties had maybe 6 to 10 figs each and I didn't expect much from them because they were only one year old and everything was at least a month or more behind.However I did like some members instructed(pinching after 5 leaves and thinning the fruit to about half) and tasted the first fig about 3 weeks ago.Sorry but I think the taste was about the same from all of them.My 2 in ground HC's were a disappointment:they died to the ground, grew some branches and lots of leaves with some figs but they'll never ripen.The HC that I had in a pot and planted in ground on the south side of the house has about 15 figs but none have ripened yet.I'll keep hoping since Jack Frost hasn't paid us a visit yet and my Negronne has 3 figs that I'd like to try.[Ed] Looked again today and found HC in ground has at least 6 figs that look good to eat.

Preto fig was amazing this year.  It beat all others by a wide margin, including RdB