We came, we saw, we concord—get it? Armed with a sleeve of little paper cups, we sipped our way through eight grape sodas, most of them canned, to find the best grape soda of them all. It’s about time right? We’ve taste tested and ranked orange soda, lemon lime soda, root beer, and every dang flavor of Mountain Dew there is, but until now, we just hadn’t gotten around to grape!
What we were looking for in the best grape soda
Grape soda runs the gamut from tasting like carbonated grape juice to tasting like carbonated grape Bubblicious. All grape soda is valid—we just want it to taste bright and sweet, whether it’s authentic or fakey grapey.
How we picked grape soda for this taste test
There isn’t a huge amount of grape soda on the market, so I bought every grape soda I could find at grocery stores near us. There are some big brands that we weren’t able to find nearby for some reason—what gives, Fanta?!—but we’ll try them in our next grape soda taste test. Also, while we didn’t try any diet grape soda (as in totally sugar free), we did taste test a few “healthy” grape sodas, the kind that are lower sugar and, usually, prebiotic or probiotic. For now, here’s the best grape soda.
The following article contains affiliate links that may generate a small commission to us when you make a purchase through the link. Learn more about how we work with affiliates here.
- Olipop Classic Grape
-
As the name suggests, Olipop Classic Grape has a classic concord grape juice flavor. It’s very, very sweet and definitely tastes like the blend of alternative sweeteners, which is a real doozy of a list, but it works pretty well with the flavor of the grape juice. This is the best grape soda if you’re looking for a healthier option—it’s way lower in sugar than the other sodas on this list and it contains prebiotics, if you’re a gut health girlie. Honestly, we didn’t come across a lot of straight-up diet grape soda options when we were shopping!
Credit: Merc / Instacart
- Grape Crush
-
Grape Crush doesn’t have the pizazz that our #1 best grape soda has, but it’s very good. It tastes exactly the way you expect an ice cold can of grape soda from a soda machine to taste. It reminds me of being a kid and asking my parents for a quarter (yeah, I’m old) so I could get a can of soda before going into Walmart or whatever. The grape flavor is very Dimetapp adjacent, and I think that’s what a lot of people want in their grape soda.
Credit: Merc / Walmart
- Sprecher Grape Soda
-
I absolutely love this grape soda. There’s raw honey in the mix, which gives it more dimension. And don’t worry: It’s still sweetened with glucose syrup, so it’s not overly honey-ish tasting, but it’s really rich and mellow and goes down nice and smooth because the carbonation is very light and zippy. This is a small bubble soda rather than a big bubble soda and we like it. Sprecher makes the best grape soda if you want something that feels a little fancy—you know, for grape soda.
Credit: Merc /
- Shasta Grape
-
I need you to trust me that this is the best grape soda. It’s so much more interesting tasting than Crush! Crush just kind of goes to sleep on your palate when you take a sip, but Shasta keeps evolving. It starts with a burst of almost cotton candy sweetness and then evolves into a bright, nostalgic grape flavor that reminds me almost exactly of grape Bubblicious. We’ve tried a lot of Shasta flavors and I think this is the first one to take the first place spot in a ranking—it’s that good!
Credit: Merc / Food 4 Less
Best Prebiotic Grape Soda
Best Classic Grape Soda
Best Craft
Best of the Best
Other grape sodas we tried: Slice Healthy Soda, Big K, Poppi
