Topo Chico has been around for a long time, and it’s a lot of people’s go-to sparkling mineral water due to…well… its specific mineral taste. It’s known for its glass bottles, fun name (it means “little mole”), and iconic red-and-yellow logo. Until now, Topo Chico only came in three flavors: plain, Twist of Lime, and Twist of Grapefruit. This month, however, the Coca-Cola-owned brand branched out into not only full-flavor sparkling water, but also into slim cans so you can finally take them to the beach and the pool without running afoul of no-glass-bottles rules.
These brightly colored new canned offerings—called Topo Chico Sabores—come in three flavors: Lime with Mint Extract, Tangerine with Ginger Extract, and Blueberry with Hibiscus Extract. These new Topo Chico flavors just hit shelves nationwide last week, so of course we are here to answer the question: Are these Topo Chicos the new Top(o) sparkling water on the market, or should we all be sticking to LaCroix? Read on to see what we thought of them.
- Topo Chico Sabores Blueberry with Hibiscus Extract
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Pros: Fresh out of the fridge, this new Topo Chico flavor has a bold blueberry flavor, in a very pleasant blueberry jam/cooked blueberry sort of way. If you liked those Kellogg’s mixed berry gummies back in the day, you’ll quite like this. This has a lot of bubbles and only a very slight hint of that telltale hibiscus sourness—but the sourness does get stronger the longer the drink is open and out of the fridge.
Cons: As it warms up and loses carbonation, this Topo Chico gets sweeter and tastes more like Welch’s mixed fruit gummies and less like cooked fruit. Also, I don’t know exactly what hibiscus is supposed to taste like on its own, but if it’s just a certain sourness and astringency then it totally shows up in this drink’s flavor profile. If that’s not how hibiscus is supposed to taste, then there isn’t much there there. Either way, it’s definitely mostly blueberry, but hey, there are worse things!
- Tangerine with Ginger Extract
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Pros: This Topo Chico flavor smells super tangerine-y at first, like a freshly peeled Cutie. Then, after the first 30 seconds or so, it tastes a lot more like ginger and starts to smell like ginger ale. Once it warms up a little and loses some carbonation, it definitely tastes more like ginger than tangerine, but boy, is this one delicious. It is like a health shot but slow and pleasant. It’s the most caloric of the three flavors (likely because tangerine juice just has more sugar in it) and it shows—it just tastes more full and fruity.
Cons: If you came for the tangerine and tried this, you might be a bit disappointed by the sheer amount of ginger flavor involved. But if you don’t mind a ginger ale, you won’t be put off by this Topo Chico flavor by any means.
- Lime with Mint Extract
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Pros: Topo Chico Lime with Mint Extract is subtle and refreshing. The smell reminds me of a mojito. You definitely get more mint than lime, but both are certainly present. As this one warmed up and bubbles dissipated, more lime flavor entered the chat and the flavor overall got more robust.
Cons: Overall, this Topo Chico flavor was a bit too subtle for my taste. I get that lime juice will always be less flavorful than a blueberry or a tangerine concentrate, but I could have used a bit more fruity and zingy lime to round out the mint. That said, if you like the subtleness of spa water or any sort of water with fresh herbs and fruits floating in it, this one may just be your new best friend. It essentially tastes like a canned and fizzy version of that.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!