When it comes to sparkling water, Spindrift is my personal favorite. Rather than relying on food science to duplicate fruit flavors, Spindrift combines real fruit juices and purees with carbonated water to create sparkling water that—and you won’t believe this—tastes fresher, fruitier, and more realistic than any other brand. The best Spindrift flavors taste like what they are because they’re made with what they are. (Sorry if that reads like ad copy—I just genuinely love this stuff.)
The first time we set out to rank the best Spindrift flavors, there were a few we couldn’t locate. This updated ranking is more complete. Yes, I have my go-to flavors of Spindrift, but in these two taste tests I tried some Spindrift flavors I wouldn’t typically reach for and found some unexpected bangers in the lineup. Based on our two in-office taste tests, these are the best Spindrift flavors.
- Lemon Limeade
I was positive we would love this flavor of Spindrift, but I was wrong. All the lemon-flavored Spindrifts (with the exception of Half Tea & Half Lemon) have a slightly sour flavor. Not sour as in tart, sour as in…slightly off. This flavor is just meh.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Lemon
Again, when it comes to citrus-flavored Spindrift, lime is great, lemon is not. Lemon Spindrift isn’t bad, I just promise you that there are better Spindrift flavors out there. It’s a little weak, a little dull when so many of these are just so tasty.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Mint Green Tea
Spoiler: The best Spindrift flavor of them all is a tea-flavored variety, but their green tea is a different story. This is not bad (in fact, I think people who really, really love green tea might go hard for this stuff), but there’s something about the bitterness of the green tea and the bitterness of mint leaves that makes this a sort of sour sip. There are superior Spindrift sparkling water flavors with tea and mint in their flavor profiles.
- Pink Lemonade
What makes this pink lemonade pink lemonade? According to the ingredients on the can, it contains both cherry juice and some hibiscus for color. All in all, this Spindrift flavor is fine but it’s not outstanding. I detected a slightly different sort of tartness, which I’ll credit to the cherry juice. If I were blindfolded, I wouldn’t know this was pink lemonade.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Strawberry Lemonade
Now we’re getting somewhere! The strawberry puree really livens up the overall flavor of this sparkling lemonade, which includes both lemon and lime juice. If you (like me) always thought the now-discontinued Strawberry was the best Spindrift flavor, go for Peach Strawberry instead of this.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Blood Orange Tangerine
This is a really nice take on an orange sparkling water. The ingredients are carbonated water, blood orange juice, tangerine juice, and citric acid, and the tangerine juice in particular contributes that good “juicy Cuties” citrus fruit flavor, while the blood orange is a little drier and more bitter. I think this flavor of Spindrift is still mild enough that it would be really good with citrus vodka.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Cranberry Raspberry
Nearly all Spindrift flavors taste good, so one way to determine which flavors are the best Spindrift flavors is to decide how faithfully they adhere to their flavor profiles. That’s where some of the two-in-one flavors falter, like this Cranberry Raspberry. I only tasted raspberry. Does the raspberry flavor taste good? Oh, yeah. But this Spindrift flavor would have ranked higher if the cranberry came through.
Credit: Liv Averett / Spindrift
- Peach Strawberry
As far as I know, they don’t make straight-up strawberry Spindrift anymore, but this is a good replacement if that was your favorite flavor of Spindrift! This tastes almost exactly like Strawberry Spindrift, which is great, but that’s also why it didn’t rank higher. It just doesn’t really taste like peach. Still, it’s the best Spindrift flavor if you miss Strawberry.
Credit: Liv Averett / Spindrift
- Mango Orange
This Spindrift has a lot of mango on the nose, so the subdued mango flavor is a little bit of a let down, but it’s still really pleasant. It’s nice that the orange juice (and presumably the citric acid) gives the mango puree a tart edge, but you ultimately get more orange than mango. I would not turn this down, but it’s not the best Spindrift flavor out there.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Mango Black Tea
The search for the missing mango continues! This is great–but there isn’t enough mango flavor. Really it just tastes like black tea with a little bit of fruity sweetness, but it is GOOD.
Credit: Liv Averett / Spindrift
- Spiced Apple Cider
When I first took a sip of this Spindrift flavor I was like, “Huh, this just tastes like watered down apple cider.” But as I continued to drink I was more like, “Wow, yum! This tastes like watered down apple cider!” You get the tartness of apple and the warmth of cinnamon, all in a refreshing sparkling water. Kind of brilliant, TBH. If you want a sparkling water that’s thirst quenching but still feels cozy for fall, this is the best Spindrift flavor.
Credit: Liv Averett / Spindrift
- Pineapple
Pineapple Spindrift is delicious. If you’re accustomed to drinking pineapple juice out of a can, it’s also highly nostalgic. This is a totally essential summer sip—it’s refreshing, tropical, delicious, with plenty of suggested sweetness (without actual sweetness). If you use Spindrift as a mixer like I do, this is the best Spindrift flavor to mix this with Bacardi or another light rum.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Grapefruit
Confession time: Grapefruit is typically one of my least favorite flavors of sparkling water. But this is a different story. This is made with grapefruit juice, not grapefruit flavor, and it is good. The ingredients are carbonated water, grapefruit juice, orange juice, lemon juice, and hibiscus for color. It actually has grapefruit juice bitterness, like taking a scoop of a halved grapefruit with one of those serrated spoons and getting a little bit of rind. This is so much better than LaCroix Pamplemousse. (Yep, we ranked all the LaCroix flavors, too.)
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Raspberry Lime
I never would have thought to buy Raspberry Lime Spindrift, but this is so good! It’s made with raspberry puree rather than raspberry juice, and it definitely gives it a bigger raspberry flavor. The lime lingers in the background and just adds a little bit of brightness, but the raspberry is the real star. I don’t gravitate toward raspberry flavored things, I think because fake raspberry flavor is frequently bad! But real raspberry puree flavor? Unbelievably delicious. This flavor of Spindrift actually nails both flavor profiles.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Lime
Lemon Limeade is meh, but Lime is one of the best Spindrift flavors of them all in the Sporked crew’s opinion. It’s tart and bright and perfect for so many things—drink it alone, spike it with literally any liquor (vodka, tequila, whiskey), or add a splash of it to pretty much any beverage for a little effervescence and punch of citrus flavor. It tastes like high-quality key lime juice in very good bubbly water. It’s pretty much perfect, but can be a little tart for some people.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Nojito
We tried Nojito during our second taste test and it instantly secured a spot among the best Spindrift flavors. Nojito combines lime and mint—so, like a Mojito minus the rum—and it succeeds in being an improvement on the regular lime flavor, which we also love. You really taste both lime and mint—and the mint is nice and herbaceous, like actual muddled mint rather than mint extract. This is such a pleasant sip and I think the mint takes the edge off the tartness of the real lime juice a little bit. Still, it’s plenty zesty and tasty. This flavor of Spindrift would make an amazing mixer, but it’s good on its own, too.
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
- Half Tea & Lemon
When we taste tested hard seltzers, Spindrift Spiked was our favorite brand, in part because we loved their Half Tea & Half Lemon flavor so much. Well, Spindrift does it just as well without the booze. This sparkling water is just so true to its flavor intentions, probably because its ingredients are literally just carbonated water, lemon juice, and brewed black tea (which contributes a little baby dose of caffeine, too). The tea is bold and bitter and the lemon flavor actually works here. This is the best Spindrift flavor for summer evenings on the porch—and the best Spindrift flavor in general.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
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