If my first and foremost professional identity is as a friendship reporter, then second and foremost I am a LaCroix critic. I know their entire body of work; I stay on top of the new releases. I of course dabble in other brands of seltzer, too; one must always evaluate things in their proper context. My opinions have been carefully considered over years of study and I share them in a spirit of public service.

But before I get into the rankings, let me share some of my general principles of LaCroix enjoyment. Firstly, some may call me backwards, an enemy of innovation, but I believe that seltzer should taste like fruit. ¹ LaCroix has recently made some moves away from this core principle, attempting to emulate the flavors of desserts, flowers, and alcoholic beverages. Some of these experiments have been more successful than others, but not a single one rises above a B-tier. They’re heading down a path of sin and heresy and I can only pray that someone leads them back to the light.

Secondly, the more acidic the flavor, the better. There are some exceptions to this, but a citrus flavor is almost always going to treat you kindly ² whereas you’re on dangerous ground with something more basic (in the pH sense, not in the sense of a basic bitch), like some of our D-listers, Berry and Coconut.

Disclaimers:

Many people, including some of those closest to me, have disagreed with these rankings. That’s their right. This is America, after all, where everyone is free to be as wrong as they like.

Other people, mostly strangers, have said of LaCroix that it tastes like “lightly flavored TV static,” “like your actual drink is still buffering,” or “like someone ate a fruit salad and then burped into your water bottle.” This is hilarious and not totally untrue, but may I say that if what you’re looking for is sweetness and strong flavor then what you are actually interested in is not seltzer, but juice. And that’s outside my purview.

The Rankings

S Tier: The best of the best

Pamplemousse (Grapefruit): She’s everyone’s favorite for a reason. A nice, acidic crowd pleaser with a light bouquet and a sharp finish.

Pastèque (Watermelon): A relative newcomer with a strong, pleasing flavor that’s not too chemically like some watermelon flavoring can be. Only watermelons and grapefruits speak French, I guess. Or perhaps the French names are reserved for the crème de la crème.

Tangerine: My personal favorite. So refreshing, and lightyears better than Orange, which is a real mystery. It’s the quenchiest!

Cerise Limón Cúrate (Cherry Lime): The Cúrate brand is bilingual; these naming decisions seem arbitrary. A possibly controversial inclusion because if you’re one of those people who hates cherry flavoring, then surprise, you won’t like this, but it is juicy and sharp and delicious. Notes of “red” flavored slushie with a hint of lime.³

A Tier: Delicious, always happy to see them

Lime: Better than both Lemon and Orange for some reason.

Passionfruit: Tangy, refreshing, highly agreeable.

Guava São Paulo: The naming conventions are getting a little Fast and the Furious, to be sure—no other flavor has a city’s name in it? But just go with it, it tastes great. The tropical flavors tend to work well.

Peach-Pear: The one exception to the pH rule—not particularly acidic, but it just works. The peach tastes truly peachy, and the pear is just a hint. Well-balanced; delightful.

Strawberry Peach: The newest flavor, just released last month, and the best one they’ve released in several years. It’s that peach, I’m telling you, they’ve got something special there.

B Tier: A sometimes flavor, to mix it up

Lemon: Simple, classic, gets the job done. Pairs well with a nice piece of fish.

Beach Plum: This tastes exactly like a plum-flavored Starburst that I could have sworn I ate as a child and that was since discontinued, but a deep dive on Google turns up very little evidence that it ever existed. Is this a Mandela effect situation? Regardless, the plum LaCroix is pretty good, whether it summons a mysterious nostalgia for you or not.

Mango: Their least successful tropical flavor is still decently successful. I think maybe mango is too subtle a flavor to translate super well to seltzer form? But it’s still tasty.

Apricot: Not as good at Peach-Pear, and fills the same niche. But she’s kind, approachable.

Black Razzberry: This is what the Berry flavor should have been, but to be honest it’s still just okay.

Piña Fraise Cúrate (Pineapple Strawberry): Nice and acidic, not bad, but the strawberry doesn’t hit quite the way I want it to.

Kiwi Sandía Cúrate (Kiwi Watermelon): We no longer really have need for this since Pastèque hit the scene. Despite being redundant, it’s perfectly drinkable.

Melón Pomelo Cúrate (Melon Grapefruit): They just took Pamplemousse and made it worse. But even the poor man’s Pamplemousse is decent.

Hi-Biscus! (exclamation point included): Fun idea, execution mid. We’re friendly acquaintances, but we’re never going to be good friends, and that’s okay.

C Tier: I would prefer not to

Orange: I don’t know, man. It’s simple, it’s citrus, it should be fine, right? And I could drink it if I had to, but for my money, something’s off. Tastes like disappointment.

Pure: I mean, sure. If you’re boring.

Cherry Blossom: My office exclusively stocked this flavor of LaCroix for a while (because we’re in D.C.—it’s cute, get it?) and while I didn’t mind it at first, my coworkers pointed out that there’s a curious aftertaste of...chocolate? And that kind of ruined it for me.

Muré Pepino Cúrate (Blackberry Cucumber): Tastes like a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker I had as a child (possibly this one?), including the sort of plasticky undertones. I don’t want to drink a Lipsmacker.

Pomme Bayá Cúrate (Apple Berry): Suffers from the pH problem. I don’t think I’ve ever had an apple-flavored seltzer that works, it always ends up tasting like watered down apple juice.

D Tier: Undrinkable

Limoncello: Foul. Hateful. Tastes kind of like a lemon cookie, but not in a good way. Like if someone put a lemon cookie in your water bottle and it got all mushy in there. It’s treacly sweet, but since it’s water, not juice, the sweetness just feels uncanny and wrong. This is some people’s favorite flavor (someone on the LaCroix subreddit made an oil painting of it) and this to me seems like the strongest evidence yet that we live in a simulation and some people’s realities just have slightly different programming. They can’t possibly be tasting what I’m tasting.

Mojito: I think they were trying to get in on the mocktail trend, but LaCroix must stop trying to create seltzer approximations of existing drinks. This tastes like someone made a pitcher of mojitos; drank it; left the ice sitting outside for hours; then took the melted dirty ice with like one brown and wilted mint leaf floating in it and made seltzer out of that.

Berry: Nasty. That’s it.

Razz-Cranberry (formerly Cran-Raspberry, a bafflingly unnecessary name change): Somehow tastes neither like cranberries nor raspberries, but an unholy chemical flavor that never lets you forget it was engineered in a factory somewhere. Try the Bubly brand Raspberry flavor instead.

Coconut: If you like drinking sunscreen, I guess you’ll like this.

LaCola: I debated whether to include this, because, is this seltzer? Is this fake soda? Is it somewhere in between? Either way, it ain’t right, and you didn’t need me to tell you what you already knew in your heart to be true.

Key Lime: Hell is empty because the devil is here, tricking innocent customers who wanted regular Lime into drinking this, because the box looks only slightly different. You try it in good faith—key lime pie, after all, is delicious. But while it’s sweet on the nose, it ends with a toxic aftertaste in the back of the throat that is not unlike ammonia. Then you face the question of whether you choke down 12 cans of this bitter, medicinal substance because you already paid for it, or just throw it away. I chose the latter.

1  I will make one semi-exception for Waterloo’s Orange Vanilla flavor which even I must admit slaps. But we’re not ranking Waterloo brand seltzers today.

2  Major exception being Key Lime

3  I went on an absolute wild goose chase this week regarding the Cúrate brand. The LaCroix website currently only features the Cerise Limón and Piña Fraise flavors, making me think that the others may have been discontinued. Pomme Bayá, Muré Pepino, and Kiwi Sandía are showing up as “currently unavailable” on Amazon, and Melón Pomelo isn’t even listed. When I called the customer service hotline of LaCroix’s parent company, the National Beverage Company, they told me those flavors had indeed been discontinued, but later a press person told me over email that those flavors just aren’t available online right now but they’re still being manufactured and are available at retailers. So we ended up in the place where we started, I guess I just wanted you to know the effort I put in to make sure this list was as up to date as possible.