If you swing by the Condé Nast office and notice that Bon Appétit is the only brand with a desk-side beverage fridge, you can thank our inaugural Pantry Awards for the upgrade. Our team successfully lobbied for a Rocco Fridge so we could properly taste-test every nominee in this year’s drinks category. For months, we’ve been sampling cans between edit meetings, alongside our desk lunches, and through the 3 p.m. slump. Plenty didn’t make it back into refrigeration, while others earned a dedicated shelf (or two…).

So what makes a drink worthy of a spot in our office fridge? We were looking for drinks that delivered more than hydration.

Many of our favorites lean into culinary history, like Tractor’s Haymaker, which revives the farmer’s switchel of yesteryear; Bawi’s bubbly take on Mexican agua frescas; and Yuzuco’s cold-pressed Japanese yuzu juice blended with sparkling water. Others pushed flavor boundaries: Walker Brothers’ Forest Water is flavored with ingredients like white pine bark and clover blossoms, while Oomee’s tea-infused marine plant beverage is bolstered with algae-derived agar agar. And Ghia’s Blood Orange Le Spritz showed us that the nonalcoholic space still has plenty of innovation left in the tank.

After tasting our way through 170 drink submissions, these six stood out.

A Test Kitchen fridge filled with finalists.

Photo by Travis Rainey

YUZUCO Sparkling Yuzu + Minerals

Yuzuco

Sparkling Yuzu + Minerals

Yuzuco combines cold-pressed yuzu juice with sparkling water and minerals to craft a refreshing drink that tastes fresh-squeezed. We love it on its own straight from the can, but it makes for a mean cocktail mixer too.

One tester said: “Yuzuco knows its way around citrus, and its new sparkling water line is no exception. Labelled ‘yuzu + minerals’ (touting vitamin C, magnesium, calcium, potassium and Himalayan sea salt), it kinda-sorta-maybe sounds like a so-called ‘functional beverage’? But it doesn’t drink like one: It’s a juicy burst of citrus that washes one’s palate with light, refreshingly salty bubbles—it kinda gives paloma vibes over a post-run thirst quencher.” —Joseph Hernandez, director of culture