All Of Wendy's Lemonades, Ranked

When it comes to fast food, the beverage that accompanies my meal is often an afterthought. I mean, each fast food joint pretty much promises Coke or Pepsi products, right? But one chain in particular makes a big deal of serving up a classic refresher alongside your burger and fries, and that's Wendy's. Is its menu of lemonades worth tacking onto your order?

Wendy's sells four flavors of lemonade: All-Natural (the regular stuff), Strawberry, Pineapple Mango, and the newest addition, Blueberry Pomegranate. These all sound appealing, given that I can drink a Coke just about anywhere else. Sipping on a blend of lemon juice, sweetener, and water while taking down a spicy (and salty) chicken sandwich sounds pretty all right, if you ask me. Yet somehow, I've never ordered any of the four lemonades on the menu.

I visited my local Wendy's to taste each and every flavor, and it turns out that one stood out high above the rest. (Spoiler alert: It wasn't the regular stuff.)

I'm actually a little surprised the Pineapple Mango lemonade came in dead last, since I'm generally a big fan of those fruit flavors. But I should have seen this coming, since mass-produced pineapple juice generally tastes pallid in comparison to the fresh stuff. Most of its vibrancy disappears when it's shipped in a can or a bottle, so there was no way this would fare any better in a fast food setting. The mango flavor is present, but neither the pineapple nor mango flavor is strong enough to give this lemonade a lively pop.

Wendy's recently discontinued one of its lemonade flavors, Sunburst Melon, which we had slotted into a respectable second place. The newest flavor in the lineup, Blueberry Pomegranate, doesn't achieve that placement, and so our rankings have shifted somewhat.

While this is a decent flavor overall, it's hard to read either blueberry or pomegranate in the mix, resulting in a beverage that just ends up tasting like an indecipherable tart and sweet fruit juice. If you didn't tell me what it was, I'd be completely lost in trying to guess what it could be. That doesn't mean the Blueberry Pomegranate lemonade tastes bad, just that it's less successful as a palate-catching flavor. It's more tart than the Strawberry or Pineapple Mango, so if you prefer that type of tangy quality to your lemonade, Blueberry Pomegranate might be the way to go.

Though previously placed third out of four, this lemonade has shifted upward in the rankings, thanks to the discontinuation of prior runner-up Sunburst Melon. The classic lemonade without bells and whistles, which Wendy's calls All-Natural, is fine, if uncompelling. It doesn't have what I'd call a clean, crisp, lemony flavor to it, which is the secret to a really delicious lemonade—the tartness has to cut through the sweetness. This stuff is a little on the dull side. But since it focuses on lemon flavor and embodies a classic lemonade in a way the prior two drinks don't, it gets second-place status.

Wendy's Strawberry Lemonade is by far the best of the bunch. It's more reminiscent of strawberry jam mixed into lemonade than it is, say, a freshly pressed juice, but come on, we're talking about Wendy's here. You can see little bits of fruit puree at the bottom of the clear cup, and it's the only one of these four lemonades I could see myself ordering to sip on a hot summer day. It has the power to cut the salt between bites of Wendy's spicy nuggets or a Baconator, but would also be a worthy order all on its own. Good to know for the warmer days ahead.