10 Long Drink Flavors, Ranked Best To Worst

Lonkero, or the long drink, first came about as part of the preparation for the Helsinki, Finland, Summer Olympic Games in 1952. This refreshing and favorite Finnish drink was an easygoing mixture of grapefruit soda (like the drink Lyndon B. Johnson loved) and gin, merging flavors of juniper berries with the bright, tangy taste and feel of a citrus soda.

The Long Drink-branded drinks in your local grocery store today are a new generation of the original long drink, but it took over half a century for the drink to reach American shores in 2018. Evan Burns, Sakari Manninen, Mikael Taipale, and Ere Partanen co-founded Long Drink and quickly gained investors Miles Teller, Kygo, and even Rickie Fowler. Long Drink is part of a fourth category of alcoholic beverages that goes beyond beer, wine, and liquor, and since the launch of this canned, ready-to-drink beverage, the line has substantially expanded to ten varieties. As someone new to this Finnish favorite, I eagerly sampled each flavor and ranked them from the best of the bunch to those I would rather leave on the shelf.

During the summer, sweet summer Piña Coladas and other pineapple drinks are some of my absolute favorites. Over any of the other flavors, I found that pineapple offered the most accurate fruity taste per sip. The pineapple mixed well with the juniper and gin flavor, and really heightened the flavor of everything altogether.

It's always impressive to me when I can enjoy something that tastes like it actually contains a real fruit, and the pineapple Long Drink definitely tasted like it included pineapple juice straight from the source. Unlike other flavors I tried, the pineapple flavor and aftertaste even persisted in subsequent sips, making the pineapple a full feature of this drink, rather than something seemingly forgotten, as with some of the other flavors. Being such a fan of pineapple-flavored items, perhaps it's no surprise that I placed this pineapple offering ahead of even the traditional citrus flavors in my ranking. All told, if you're looking for a truly pineapple-forward ready-to-drink beverage, Long Drink has you covered.

I began by taste-testing the flavor that had "traditional" in the name. This one aimed to be similar to that classic beverage created for the Summer games. Don't be fooled by the blue can, however. Long Drink chose blue cans to represent citrus (grapefruit, specifically) rather than yellow.

The traditional citrus flavor was immediately refreshing. The grapefruit flavor called to mind those sour Altoid grapefruit candies I remember loving as a kid. Though it certainly was a fizzy drink, the carbonation wasn't overwhelming and added a refreshing feature to the citrus that merged easily with the flavor. As the most basic version of the drink, traditional citrus is an ideal baseline on which to base everything else. Gin drinkers will certainly enjoy it, but it didn't taste like the kind of drink made exclusively for gin drinkers, but rather those looking for something very refreshing, and as the name suggests, like something you might take a long swig from. My husband compared the flavor to a Squirt soda, but grown-up, so perhaps it's no wonder Long Drink has captured the attention of so many.

As a rule, I am immediately skeptical of zero-sugar flavor options, and I've never even been a fan of zero-sugar and diet sodas. I tend to prefer the taste and texture of full-sugar drinks over artificial sweeteners and find that zero-sugar options leave a very unpleasant taste behind. Long Drink's zero-sugar citrus option is the exception to this rule because if I didn't know this was a zero-sugar option, I might not be able to tell from drinking it.

The only significant difference I could taste between the traditional citrus and the zero-sugar citrus option was the flavor of grapefruit. I found that the zero-sugar version had a slightly dampened grapefruit flavor that came through much more strongly in the full-sugar version. The artificial sweetener didn't really come through in any sort of significant flavor, and if the aftertaste typically left by artificial sweeteners was there, it was extremely minimal and not noticeable at all. The only reason I placed this offering slightly lower than its full-sugar twin is that I slightly preferred the stronger grapefruit flavor of the traditional citrus option. Also, interestingly, the can stated that the zero-sugar citrus was 5% alcohol, which is a half a percentage point lower than the traditional citrus, which sits at 5.5% alcohol, the highest among the other flavors, with one exception.

Long Drink's strong citrus flavor had the highest alcohol content at 8.5%. Before I noticed how much higher the alcohol content was compared to the other flavors, I assumed the strong citrus referred to citrus intensity more than alcohol content, but that wasn't the case. If you're looking for something stiffer than the typical offering, the strong citrus flavor is your best bet.

With a higher alcohol content, part of me assumed that it might taste overly alcoholic, but it was impressively mild, at least at first sip. Notably, the carbonation was less pronounced in the strong citrus than even the traditional citrus flavors, and it had more of a mellowed-out taste to it that I certainly didn't expect from a strong citrus option. Over my later sips, that more mellow flavor turned from a mellow grapefruit taste to an alcoholic flavor that built over time. Oddly enough, I preferred the little extra bite of carbonation to the smoother flavor of the strong citrus, which put this one just a little lower in my ranking than the traditional citrus and even the zero-sugar option.

I don't typically like raspberries. However, raspberry-flavored items like yogurt and other foods where raspberry plays a supporting role are some of my favorite offerings. I find that artificially flavored raspberries tend to lean closer to something of a mixed berry, and I expected a similar outcome with Long Drink's raspberry. However, the raspberry from Long Drink was actually closer to a strictly raspberry flavor rather than mixed berry flavor, even with the juniper berries.

I didn't enjoy the flavor quite as much as I did the pineapple or the citrus, but it was definitely better than others I sampled. The raspberry had that complex flavor that you can only get from a raspberry flavoring, and I thought the drink represented it well overall. Of the offerings, this was the only flavor that had me dreaming up mixed drinks. I felt it would mix well with a boozy canned lemonade or be a great way to transform boring iced tea.

With the promising showing of zero-sugar traditional citrus, I was hopeful for the other zero-sugar drinks I would try. Unfortunately, none of them performed nearly as well. While the full-sugar pineapple tasted like taking a bite out of a pineapple, its zero-sugar alternative tasted like artificial sweetener with a dab of pineapple flavor.

I enjoyed the zero-sugar pineapple more than I did the zero-sugar peach because I liked that I could actually taste some of the pineapple, even though it was mostly marred by the zero-sugar element. Still, the pineapple that was there definitely tasted better than the attempt at a peach flavor, in both the zero-sugar and full-sugar options. Honestly, the reason the zero-sugar pineapple flavor is much lower than the regular pineapple flavor has everything to do with the deep disparity between the zero-sugar and its full-sugar option. When something is as enjoyable as the full-sugar option was, having anything less than a good alternative for zero-sugar in the same flavor is going to be disappointing.

I find that peach drinks typically all taste the same, as a sort of play on a fuzzy navel. However, this mixture of gin, juniper berries, and peach flavoring breaks from tradition, tasting notably different from other fuzzy-navel, peach-flaunting drinks. Though the peach is certainly pronounced more than the juniper berries and gin, it isn't by much. This didn't taste like a significant departure from the traditional citrus Long Drink, but more like a Long Drink that happens to also have a little bit of peach juice in it.

Although I like that the drink doesn't fully abandon its Long Drink roots, I definitely expected there to be a more pronounced peach flavor to offer more juiciness. In fact, with time, the peach notes seemed to ease entirely into the backdrop, allowing the gin and juniper berries to really take the stage. I preferred the traditional citrus and pineapple offerings in the range because the peach felt like too much of a tease, especially considering how well the pineapple performed.

Cranberry was the only flavor that didn't have a zero-sugar alternative. I imagined this might be because it was the least popular, and I could see why after a few sips. Typically, I love cranberry drinks and certainly enjoy my fair share of tart cranberry juice, but actual cranberry cocktails usually deliver more than the Long Drink cranberry option.

Cranberry needs to have a delightful mix of sweet and tart elements, but the cranberry Long Drink didn't give enough sweetness or tartness to be enjoyable. It also just didn't really taste like cranberry, or like there was enough carbonation. As one of the least accurately named drinks in the lineup, I'm placing it pretty low overall, especially since there are definitely flavors that thoroughly and accurately represent their named fruits. Cranberry was easily my least favorite fully sugared drink of the bunch.

Though the zero-sugar citrus tasted impressively like the regular traditional citrus, the zero-sugar peach didn't come anywhere near the same feat. Like many zero-sugar drinks, it tasted like it had a fake sweetener in it. It wasn't enjoyable, and just like its regular peach flavor, the actual juiciness of the fruit wasn't enough to satisfy.

Thankfully, the zero-sugar peach didn't also carry a poor, artificial aftertaste as many zero-sugar drinks do. Still, if you simply must have a zero-sugar offering, you're better off just going for the traditional citrus zero-sugar flavor since it's so close to the original. After my first taste of that zero-sugar traditional citrus, I was truly hoping that most of these zero-sugar flavors would be impressive in their ability to mimic typical sugar without aftertaste, but the artificial factor, at least in the peach offering, is impossible to cover up, making it fall pretty low in my overall ranking.

I'm not surprised that my least favorite Long Drink was a zero-sugar flavor. I was, however, disappointed with the way raspberry flavor attempted to emerge here. Where the regular raspberry was delightful, the zero-sugar alternative had a far more diluted flavor that mixed poorly with the zero-sugar additions.

Admittedly, it would be unfair to expect a drink to taste exactly like the fruit it claims to represent, but the zero-sugar raspberry was too far off. Sipping this one, I was struck by the fact that the flavor felt like an option that was in the lineup because it had to be, not because it had been crafted. Of the zero-sugar choices, raspberry was definitely my least favorite because the artificial sweetener and flavoring were more abundant here than in any of the others. Take my advice: just enjoy the zero-sugar traditional citrus if you need something with an artificial sweetener rather than real sugar.

The folks from Long Drink provided me with the whole line of Long Drink offerings, so I sampled each and ranked them from the best to worst. To be considered the best, the drink needed to be refreshing and flavorful, offering a balance of enjoyable flavors. I gave the top spots to the flavors that actually represent their named fruit, and my least favorites were ones I didn't find enjoyable, had a poor mixture of flavors, and/or poorly represented their named fruit.