When it comes to sparkling water, Spindrift is my personal fave. 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.)
My favorite flavor of Spindrift, Strawberry, was nowhere to be found, at least in Southern California, but that’s okay—it encouraged me to give flavors a shot that I wouldn’t normally try and, I gotta say, I found some unexpected bangers in the Spindrift flavors lineup. Based on our in-office taste test of every flavor we could find, these are the best Spindrift flavors.
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- Lemon Limeade
I was positive we would love this flavor, 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 tasted like a peroxide gargle to me, and I’m certain that wasn’t their intention.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Lemon
Again, when it comes to citrus-flavored Spindrift, lime is great, lemon is not. This straight-up Lemon Spindrift isn’t disgusting, I just promise you that there are better flavors out there. It’s a little weak, a little dull when so many of these are just so tasty.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- 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, it’s fine but 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. I prefer Strawberry Spindrift, but this is an okay replacement.
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 it’s still mild enough that it would be really good with citrus vodka.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Mango Orange
This 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 I think I 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
- Pineapple
Welcome to the top five. These are the hits. 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, 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 (I don’t even know if you can juice raspberries, tbh), 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.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- 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.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
- Lime
Lemon Limeade is meh, but Lime is the best Spindrift flavor 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 perfect.
Credit: Merc / Spindrift
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