Best San Pellegrino Flavors, Ranked [Taste Test]

Sipping on a San Pellegrino soda (or, if you want to abide by the brand’s style guide, one of the Sanpellegrino Italian sparkling drinks) is like taking your taste buds on a fancy lil’ trip to the Italian Riviera. No joke, one taste of San Pellegrino Limonata and I saw my tongue speed by in a vintage Alfa Romeo Spider shouting, “Ciao, bella!” at some busty ladies. But not every San Pellegrino soda is a dream vacay in a can. If you’re gonna spring for a six pack of San Pellegrino soda, you should buy the best San Pellegrino flavors. Let us help!

San Pellegrino!

I understand that personal preference plays a part in a ranking like this. For instance, if you absolutely love pomegranate juice, Melograno & Arancia (aka Pomegranate & Orange) might just be the best San Pellegrino soda for you. But to my world traveling, jet-setter tongue, it’s just way too sweet. One of the best things about San Pellegrino Italian sparkling drinks is that they have a more tempered sweetness than your average canned soda. This one is less sophisticated. In fact, the flavor reminds me a little of children’s vitamins. Honestly, all the San Pellegrino flavors are at least a little bit good, but this is a lesser one, for sure.

Rating:

6/10

Sporks

San Pellegrino!

To be honest, Melograno & Arancia is the only San Pellegrino soda flavor that I wasn’t jazzed about. Arancia & Fico D’India (aka Orange & Prickly Pear) is sweet but complex enough that it can hang with the sodas that landed higher on this list. It loses points only because I wouldn’t have been able to put a finger on the flavor if the can didn’t tell me what it was. I would have guessed it was guava, or something. Also, this flavor is sweeter than classics like Limonata. If you drink San Pellegrino soda because you don’t want the cloying sweetness of soda, there are better options on this list.

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

San Pellegrino!

If you like citrus flavor but don’t want any bitterness or tartness, Blood Orange is one of the best San Pellegrino flavors for you. It has a more subdued citrus flavor than the Aranciata or the Limonata—it doesn’t have that rindy quality. It’s like a genuine orange flavor with smoothed out edges. This San Pellegrino soda is sweet. It’s delicious. And it won’t trigger psychosomatic heartburn.

Rating:

8.5/10

Sporks

San Pellegrino!

This has a real slap-you-in-the-fact lemon tartness that is not for me, but I think other people will absolutely love how genuine this is. It tastes like straight-up sweetened lemon juice with a touch of fizz. It’s practically like a sour soda (which we’ve taste tested); it leaves that same sensation on your tongue. I was curious if it had some citric acid in the mix but nope—that’s all lemon juice, baby. If you like a tart, refreshing drink, you’ll like this San Pellegrino soda. And I gotta say, this would be a really good mixer with some white rum and a dash of curacao. 

Rating:

9.5/10

Sporks

San Pellegrino!

This grapefruit soda puts every other grapefruit soda on planet earth to shame. The flavor is so genuine, like delicious fresh grapefruit you halved in order to eat with a little serrated spoon but with some bright, refreshing carbonation. If you do not like actual grapefruit juice, you will not like this. If you have no interest in eating a halved grapefruit sprinkled with sugar with a little serrated spoon, you will not like this—there are better San Pellegrino flavors out there for you. But if you really like grapefruit, this is a revelation. In my opinion, this is the best San Pellegrino soda.

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

San Pellegrino!

Yes, I think Pompelmo is the best San Pellegrino soda (we even gave it a Sporked Award!), but Aranciata has the edge because I think it’s more of a crowd pleaser. This is a perfect demonstration of what’s great about San Pellegrino Italian sparkling drinks—they taste like straight-up carbonated juice, not a melange of artificial flavors. This is sweet like clementines but also has a little bit of the bitterness you get from orange rind. If you’re a sucker for Orangina, then this is definitely your number one out of all the San Pellegrino flavors.

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

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