For years, beverage innovation has often meant putting a new spin on familiar flavours. But increasingly, brands are looking further afield, experimenting with exotic fruits, global flavour profiles and combinations that might once have seemed too niche for the mainstream.
Speaking at London’s Future Food Tech 2026 conference, Rory Paterson, founder and CEO of XOXO Soda, discussed the brand’s decision to experiment with less conventional flavour profiles in a bid to differentiate itself on shelf.
Paterson said XOXO Soda had initially been encouraged to focus on more traditional options such as orange, ginger and cola, but instead launched watermelon, lychee and Kyoho grape. The more unusual flavours, he said, have gone on to become some of the brand’s best sellers.
“Consumers are looking for something a little bit different,” Paterson said.
“We’ve launched a number of interesting flavours recently, which we were told not to launch and they’ve turned out to be our best sellers.”
From Japanese grape to savoury twists, here are five flavour directions showing how beverage brands are moving beyond the expected.
Kyoho grape: Putting a twist on a classic
Known for its large size, deep purple skin and sweet, rich flavour, Kyoho is a Japanese grape variety with a distinctive juicy, berry-like taste. Developed in the 1930s, the variety is now widely cultivated across Asia and is also used to flavour products including juices, sodas and chuhai, a Japanese alcoholic drink.
The variety has also found its way into soft drinks, with XOXO Soda choosing Kyoho for one of its recent launches alongside watermelon and lychee.
For XOXO Soda, Kyoho offers a way to put a different spin on an established beverage flavour. Grape is already familiar to soft drink consumers, but using a distinctive variety such as Kyoho gives the category a new point of difference.
Lychee: A taste of global exploration
Lychee is another global flavour moving beyond its traditional markets and onto a growing number of beverage shelves. Lychee was identified as one of the flavours on the rise in 2026, alongside Korean pear, yuzu and calamansi.
The trend is already visible in the UK, with brands including Rubicon and Mogu Mogu bringing lychee into the soft drinks aisle. Mogu Mogu has taken the flavour a step further with its Lychee drink, which contains pieces of the fruit for an added textural element.
UK food and beverage supplier JK Foods has also identified lychee as one of the global flavours attracting interest from Gen Z, pointing to the generation’s appetite for bold, visually appealing and globally inspired drinks. The supplier also highlights lychee’s delicate floral sweetness as making it well suited to cocktails, mocktails and mixer applications.
For drinks brands, lychee offers a relatively accessible route into global flavour innovation: distinctive enough to feel new, but familiar enough to work across a range of formats.
Yuzu: Finding the sweet spot between familiar and new
Yuzu has gone from a relatively niche Asian citrus to an increasingly familiar flavour in beverage innovation. Its sharp citrus profile offers brands a way to create a more distinctive alternative to familiar flavours such as lemon and orange.
Its rise also demonstrates the balance between familiarity and novelty that Innova identifies as a key driver of global beverage flavour trends. According to Innova Market Insights’ 2026 Beverage Flavor Trends – Global report, almost half of consumers are drawn to what they know, while one in four are open to new experiences. Citrus flavours are particularly well positioned to bridge this gap, with Innova highlighting yuzu as an example of consumers looking for more nuance within the category and pointing to growing interest in “exotic” types of citrus.
That shift is already being reflected in NPD, with recent launches including Brown Brothers’ Yuzu Lemon spritz and UK sparkling water brand Yew’s pairing of yuzu with grapefruit. Yuzu is also appearing across a wider range of beverage categories, suggesting the flavour is moving beyond specialist Asian-inspired products into more mainstream applications.
For beverage makers, yuzu illustrates how an unfamiliar flavour can become a useful innovation tool once consumers begin to recognise it. Its bright, aromatic citrus profile can add complexity to established formats while retaining the familiarity of a citrus-based drink.
Pandan: Following matcha into the mainstream
Pandan is quickly becoming a flavour to watch as beverage brands look to Asian-inspired ingredients to bring something different to familiar formats.
Beverage Daily highlighted the aromatic leaf as one of 2026’s emerging “earthy tones”, alongside matcha, yerba mate and Japanese shiso, with pandan bringing layered notes to cold brews and cocktails.
While pandan has long been used across Southeast Asian food and drinks, beverage brands are increasingly exploring its potential in more modern formats. Ready-to-drink examples include Yeo’s Pandan Flavoured Soybean Drink and Nescafé Pandan RTD coffee, while the flavour is also being used in syrups and mixers.
Its trajectory echoes that of matcha, which has expanded well beyond its traditional tea format into lattes, RTDs and other beverage applications.
For brands, pandan offers another way to tap into the Asian café influence while giving known formats a more distinctive flavour profile.
Pickle: Pushing beverages into savoury territory
Once largely associated with the jar or the sandwich, pickle is now appearing in drinks, from soft drinks and sports beverages to cocktails and spirits.
Yew, for example, has brought the flavour into the UK sparkling water market, pairing briny dill pickle with cucumber and a tangy finish. The launch demonstrates just how far brands are willing to move beyond traditional sweet and fruity profiles in search of something that stands out.
That appetite for more challenging flavours appears particularly strong among younger consumers. Mintel data found that 36% of UK soft drinks users find challenging flavours appealing as a way to create a more exciting drinking experience, rising to 56% among Gen Z and young Millennials.
Sally Kemkers, founding partner at R&D agency Untapped Innovation, said pickle beverages sit at the intersection of several consumer trends, including interest in fermented foods, bold and adventurous flavours and unconventional food and drink combinations shared on social media.
She also pointed to pickle juice’s growing association with hydration and recovery among athletes, giving the flavour a functional story alongside its distinctive taste.
The rise of pickle in beverages shows that flavour experimentation doesn’t necessarily mean finding the next exotic fruit. It can mean challenging consumers’ expectations of what a beverage should taste like altogether.
