The Absolute Best Hard Lemonade Blows The Others Out Of The Water
Ready-to-drink cocktails have taken over the summer booze scene, and for good reason. The ease and convenience of tasty, pre-mixed, portable alcoholic drinks has revolutionized beach days, barbecues, and house parties alike. Gone are the days of red Solo cups and poorly-mixed drinks, sipping on a boozy lemonade is as easy as drinking a can of beer or hard seltzer — the tough part is picking one. The hard lemonade market is crowded, so Tasting Table sampled and ranked six different brands to get some clarity on which is worth picking up on the way to your next summer gathering. Out of the six we tried, the Blackberry Lemonade from the Ole Smoky Moonshine brand easily took the top spot.
Ole Smoky is known for its wide range of flavored moonshine sold in glass jars, but not many know the brand makes canned cocktails, too. Well, one canned cocktail, at least. While the Blackberry Lemonade may be alone on the brand's current list of canned drinks, we'll be first in line when and if any new flavors are released. Upon tasting the Ole Smoky Blackberry Lemonade, we noted "an impeccable balance of flavors" and the lingering sweet berry flavor. The taste of alcohol was noticeable but not too strong, and the tart lemonade flavor came through perfectly. All in all, this is our best recommendation for boozy lemonades this summer.
What does the internet have to say about Ole Smoky?
The Ole Smoky team were making moonshine the traditional way even before they opened their first federally licensed distillery in 2010. Today, the brand crafts a frankly unbelievable array of moonshine-based products from Moonshine Pickles, Peaches, and Mandarins, to Sour Blue Razzin' Moonshine, to a Peanut Butter Cream Moonshine. With as many flavors and products the brand makes (there's also a line of regular and flavored whiskeys, too), the reviews online are understandably mixed. It seems there's something for everyone to enjoy and hate on the roster of Ole Smokey products. The reviews were also quite mixed for the canned Blackberry Lemonade, with some reviewers raving and several others complaining of an artificially sweet aftertaste.
Ole Smoky does make a Blackberry Moonshine that some people on TikTok are mixing with lemonade to DIY the cocktail at home. While this isn't quite as convenient as simply cracking open a can, it does give you the freedom to make the drink as strong (or not) as you'd like and to use a homemade or preferred lemonade brand. Regardless of whether the Ole Smoky Blackberry Lemonade strikes your fancy or not, we'll be happy to sip on it all summer long.