I was raised in a household in which diet soda was verboten. In the ’80s, everyone was super paranoid about artificial sweeteners like aspartame (maybe for good reason, I don’t know) and my mother was among them, so it was full-sugar soda or the highway, baby. Today, we have so many more carbonated beverage options than just regular or diet soda, and it’s a beautiful thing. You’ve got your unsweetened fruit-flavored seltzers like Waterloo and Polar; those very sweet (but very delicious) juice-based sodas from Sanpellegrino; those not-too-sweet juice-based seltzers from Spindrift—truly a world of fizzy options.
There’s always room for more alternatives to traditional corn syrup-laden sodas, and Olipop has been a welcome addition to the pack. Besides having extremely cute packaging, Olipop—a so-called Sparkling Tonic—has a lot less sugar than regular soda and purports to promote gut health thanks to the inclusion of prebiotics. If you’re unclear on the difference between probiotics and prebiotics, here’s a short explanation based on what I gleaned from a couple of articles on the subject: probiotics are good microorganisms that live in your gut and promote gut health, while prebiotics serve as food for those microorganisms. That’s cool and science-y, but you mostly just want a soda that’s refreshing and tastes good, right? Well, we gathered all the cans we could get our hands on and tasted them to find the best Olipop flavors out there. These five came out on top.
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- Ginger Lemon
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It was a tight race between Ginger Lemon and Cherry Vanilla for the top spot on this list, but I personally think that this tart, zingy flavor combo is just so perfectly suited to a prebiotic soda. The lemon isn’t super prominent, so it reads more like a ginger beer without the aggressive bite. It definitely has more gingery pizzaz than ginger ale and it has only two grams of sugar. It’s great by itself, but it would be good as a mixer for a mule or a bourbon cocktail too.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Olipop
- Cherry Vanilla
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I have a friend who keeps her fridge stocked with this Olipop and I love it. She also has a swimming pool, so I associate it with fun. This flavor is certainly fun, largely because the cherry flavor is so unique. Rather than the black cherry soda you’re used to, this one tastes like good, mushy pie filling or those really good maraschino cherries they put in craft cocktails at fancy bars. (According to the brand’s site, they use morello and rainier cherries to achieve that unique flavor.) I also appreciate that the hint of vanilla actually complements the sweetener in the soda (a blend of cassava root, chicory root, marshmallow root, etc.) rather than just piling on more candy sweetness.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Olipop
- Classic Grape
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I absolutely love sparkling grape juice, and this really channels that refreshing, juicy flavor without being cloying or giving you a sugar stomach ache. While grape sodas always taste a little like Dimetapp (don’t get me wrong, I love grape soda and Dimetapp), this one tastes way more like an actual grape. They also put some lime juice in the mix to brighten things up, and it all works really nicely.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Olipop
- Orange Squeeze
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This tonic is made with both clementine and mandarin juices and, no surprise, those flavors come through big time. It almost tastes like if you pumped carbonation into the juice in a can of mandarin slices. I love a classic orange soda as much as the next guy, but this tastes way more like fruit that occurs naturally on planet earth. Juicy and delicious.
Credit: Sarah Demonteverde / Olipop
- Classic Root Beer
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In the realm of classic soda flavors, Olipop makes a cola, a root beer, and now a Dr Pepper dupe called Doctor Goodwin. We didn’t love the cola (it was a little weak) and Doctor Goodwin wasn’t available yet, but the brand’s take on root beer is super satisfying, if a little more subdued than big, bold root beers like Frostie or IBC (which are both on our list of the best root beers). The mix of botanicals is aromatic and interesting, and we’d definitely crack a can of this again.
Best of the Best
Best Fruit Flavor
Best for Juice Lovers
Best Citrus
Best Classic Soda Flavor
Other products we tried: Vintage Cola, Strawberry Vanilla, Tropical Punch
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Best Club Soda please