7 Hard Seltzers Made With Real Fruit Juice You Will Want This Summer

As the market gets more crowded with hard seltzers, the category shows little signs of slowing down, even as overcrowding looms. According to alcoholic beverage trend reporter IWSR, hard seltzer volume in the U.S. is currently about 82.5 million nine-liter cases and they forecast that by 2023 the category will more than triple. According to the study, hard seltzer and other “seltzer-like” products have 2.6 percent market share of all alcoholic beverages in the country, an increase from 0.85 percent a year ago. But while the lion’s share of these drinks contain artificial and natural flavors and tout their low calories, they often end up tasting just a little bit off, typically with an aftertaste reminiscent of chemicals. And yes, even “natural flavors” contain chemical compounds, although they come from plants or animals versus being man-made.

What’s a Flavor Anyway?

“We started Volley because we know that there can be over 100 ingredients in a ‘flavor’ without being required to disclose any of them—none of which are the actual ingredient they are trying to mimic,” says Chris Wirth, the co-founder of hard seltzer brand Volley. “Let’s be honest, we all can taste the difference between a lab created flavor and the real thing.”

So why don’t more canned hard seltzer brands use real fruit juice instead of natural flavors? Wirth says it’s because using real fruit juice can make it harder to make a canned cocktail shelf-stable and, not surprisingly, using real juice is more expensive than natural flavors. Those issues mean most brands forgo actual fruit juice, sacrificing flavor in the process. 

Along with Volley, there are a growing number of canned hard seltzers using real fruit juice and whole ingredients in their drinks, offering a different way to drink clean. Here are some of the best canned hard seltzers made with real fruit juice. 

1. Volley

In June 2020, Wirth founded Volley with his wife, Camila Soriano; together the two have a combined 15 years in the spirits industry. After realizing that most hard seltzers on the market used fermented cane juice as the spirit and those dreaded natural flavors, they came up with Volley. Volley uses 100 percent blue agave tequila, sparkling water, and organic juice. It comes in four flavors: Zesty Lime, Spicy Ginger, Sharp Grapefruit, and Tropical Mango and it honest-to-goodness tastes just as it should: a slightly spiked (alcohol volume is 5.75 percent) bubbly fruit juice. It’s light and flavorful and perfect for summer sipping.

2. Spiritfruit

This brand out of Massachusetts takes a simple vodka soda and adds a splash of real fruit juice for a refreshing canned cocktail. Flavors include cranberry lime, grapefruit, blackberry, and clementine. The citrus flavors are tart and not too sweet, while the blackberry tastes a tad sweeter. Still, each can has only 2.2 grams of sugar, offering a grown-up taste with real fruit flavor.

3. Lunar

Two college friends founded Lunar when they noticed the alcoholic drinks at their favorite Asian restaurants didn’t include any Asian ingredients or products. Founders Kevin Wong and Sean Ro sought to create a hard seltzer with the flavors most emblematic of their childhood, heritage, and identity and to source premium ingredients from Asia in order to make it. Flavors like yuzu, lychee, and plum use real fruit juice for flavoring—plums are sourced from Korea, lychee from Thailand, and fresh yuzu from Japan—combined with an alcohol brewed from corn and sugar.

 4. Ficks 

One of the first hard seltzers using real fruit juice, Ficks brought their canned hard seltzer to market in 2018. Based in San Francisco, co-founders Ron Alvarado and Mike Williamson even developed a proprietary alcohol base for the seltzer that uses fermented California oranges in a method inspired by traditional winemaking techniques. Fruit-forward flavors include mango, blackberry, cranberry, and grapefruit.

5. Zuzu

This newcomer launched in January 2021 with two flavors: tart passion fruit and tangy Calamansi lime. It uses real fruit juice, sparkling water, agave syrup, sea salt, and a base of organic agave spirit that’s sourced from a family farm outside of Jalisco, Mexico. The fruits are ethically sourced from the Philippines and Ecuador. Zuzu was founded by Greta Caruso and Ali Schmidt, who both previously worked for online grocery store Good Eggs. Currently available in New York only, Zuzu launches national shipping on April 26.

6. Willie’s Superbrew

What started as a ginger homebrew by a goat farmer named Willie turned into this hard seltzer made with alcohol from cane sugar and real fruit juice when co-founder Nico Enriquez partnered with Willie to bring his brew to more people. There’s the original Lemon & Ginger, along with Pomegranate & Acai, Mango & Passionfruit, Pineapple & Lime, Blueberry & Lemon, and the new summer-only Grapefruit & Lime seasonal flavor. Willie’s donates 3 percent of their profits to a nonprofit environmental cause every year, which people nominate and then vote on their favorite.

7. Más Agave

Beloved Michigan beer makers Founder’s Brewing unveiled this hard seltzer made from blue agave nectar, cane sugar, carbonated water, sea salt, and real fruit juice in August 2020. It’s one of the only hard seltzers using fruit juice with a strawberry flavor, and it also offers grapefruit and lime flavors. Más Agave hard seltzer grew out of Founder’s Más Agave beer, when the VP of marketing diluted the strong beer with seltzer for his wife and she loved it. After months of honing the recipe, sales opened in October 2020 in certain states and it launched nationally this spring.