What Flavor Is Sprite?

Sprite began in West Germany in 1959 as Fanta Klare Zitrone, "clear lemon Fanta". Coca-Cola launched it in the US under the Sprite name in 1961, as a rival to 7 Up. That makes it a cousin of Fanta, Coca-Cola's other big fruit soda.

The US label reads: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate. Coca-Cola describes a "classic, cool, crisp lemon-lime taste" with no caffeine.¹

What you are tasting

Lemon and lime, sweet first, then a light sourness. There is no orange, no juice and no bitterness. That is what separates it from Mountain Dew, which adds orange juice and caffeine, and from Baja Blast, which pushes lime and a tropical note forward.

The sourness is mild for a soda. One US study measured Sprite at pH 3.24, the same as 7 Up. Coke measured 2.37.³ Sodium citrate helps here. It is a buffer, which means it takes the sharp edge off the citric acid.

How lemon-lime is built

Coca-Cola does not say which oils it uses. This is the general build a flavor house would use, not Sprite's formula.

Limonene is most of any citrus oil by weight, but it smells only faintly of peel. Citral is what you recognize as lemon. Distilled lime oil is made by distilling crushed limes with their own acidic juice. The acid changes the oil on the way, and the result is the familiar soda-fountain lime.

A clear drink changes the build

Citrus oil does not dissolve in water. A cloudy soda hides the oil as tiny droplets in an emulsion. A clear soda cannot.

So clear lemon-lime drinks usually use washed or terpeneless extracts. The oil is shaken with alcohol and water, and the parts that will not dissolve, mostly limonene, are taken out. What is left dissolves cleanly and is richer in citral.

The trade-off is real. You lose some peel character and body. And you concentrate the compound that breaks down fastest.

Building a lemon-lime soda

Pick a lead. Lemon-led tastes brighter and more like lemonade. Lime-led tastes more like a classic soda. An even blend can end up tasting of neither.

Expect sweeteners to show. Lemon-lime has nothing dark or spicy to hide an aftertaste behind. UK Sprite uses sugar with acesulfame K and aspartame, plus citric and tartaric acid, and "natural lemon and lime flavourings".² Any blend like that needs the flavor retuned, not just the sweetener swapped. See sugar reduction.

Call it lemon-lime. Sprite is a Coca-Cola trademark. A flavor house will list its version as a "lemon-lime soda type".