The Best Summer Flavor Trend Of 2023

There's a distinct flavor trend emerging in 2023, one that's infusing drinks and desserts alike with its fresh and fruity profile. Peaches are front and center in summer's most exciting limited-time offerings, and it's a flavor that's exciting enough to rival pickles, the other major player this year.

The explosion of peach-flavored products couldn't have come at a better time. Real peaches are currently facing a crisis: unusual winter and spring weather have wreaked havoc on Georgia's prized peach crop, leading to low yields and higher prices on any fresh peaches that have made it through the season's difficulties. For those of us who can't get enough of this flavor, being able to side-step these issues while slinging back some peachy consumer goods feels like a convenient solve.

Here's a rundown of this summer's exciting peach-flavored releases:

• Malibu Peach: This breezy, beachy rum brand has added Peach to its lineup of flavored rums, which already includes Watermelon, Pineapple, and Strawberry in addition to the original. It's available both as a bottle of rum and as a canned, ready-to-drink rum punch cocktail. RTD cocktails are ascendant in the adult beverage market, so it's nice to see peach join the category.
• Chick-fil-A drinks: "To Peach Their Own"? Okay, Chick-fil-A, that's too clever by half. The Southern-based fast food chain has announced two seasonal summer 2023 beverages, the Peach Milkshake and the White Peach Sunjoy, the latter of which features a blend of lemonade, iced tea, and peach flavoring. The milkshake allegedly went through "more than 15 iterations before landing on the perfect flavor combination," according to its press release. It's been on and off the menu since 2009.
• Busch Light: Starting this month, Busch Light Peach will be available for a limited time. The lager has 4.1% ABV and is the latest innovation to follow Busch Light Apple, which ended its run last year.
• Liquid Death: The canned water brand with badass marketing tactics released a new line of equally nonalcoholic, equally badass iced teas back in March: Armless Palmer, Grim Leafer, and Rest in Peach. Having tasted all three, I can attest that the latter is the standout, with a mild sweetness that doesn't grow cloying across a 19-oz. king size can.
• Simply Spiked: The popular citrus juice brand released its first lineup of hard-seltzer-adjacent drinks last summer, to much acclaim (including our own). In 2023, the brand announced Simply Spiked Peach, a four-flavor lineup that includes Original Peach, Mango Peach, Strawberry Peach, and Kiwi Peach. Each can is 5% ABV and, as the press release notes, "Peach is proving to be the hottest flavor of the moment as supported by a combination of growth potential, consumer appeal and category indicators. In fact, peach flavor growth is predicted to outperform 90% of all other food and beverage ingredients over the next four years."
• Leinenkugel's: This past spring, the Wisconsin-based brewery released Juicy Peach, a year-round mild sour beer that "balances delicious sweetness from natural peach juice with light tart notes." It's the brand's first-ever session sour beer, with 4.4% ABV, and according to the website, the peach flavor "is just tart enough to keep it interesting, but not overly sour."

What are some peach-flavored products you enjoy? Let us know which items we should be on the lookout for this season, because while the idea of downing rum punch and milkshakes every day is somewhat alluring, it would probably make us a little too sleepy in practice.