The Best Eggnog You Can Buy at the Store: A Taste Test

Few things in the dairy aisle are as polarizing as eggnog. Some shoppers eagerly anticipate the day the creamy beverage hits store shelves each holiday season. Others will spend an entire office Christmas party telling you the many reasons they despise the stuff. Both interpretations are valid, but today we’re here for the fans. The best store-bought eggnog is out there, and we set out to find it.

Eggnog has a long and storied history. Its exact origins are murky, but it likely evolved from a drink known as posset, a cocktail of milk mixed with wine or ale. By the 13th century, European monks were making a version that included figs and eggs, bridging the gap between archaic versions and the eggnogs more common today. English settlers eventually brought eggnog to America, and even George Washington reportedly penned a popular recipe for the drink. That recipe—said to be found among his kitchen papers—wasn’t published until 1948, in the book Christmas With the Washingtons.

It is, of course, entirely possible to make your own eggnog. Chances are it’ll be significantly less sweet than something you’d buy at a grocery store. Plus, you can tinker with the spicing and texture to your taste. You can also age homemade eggnog for a more complex flavor (as long as it’s above 14% ABV). But sometimes nostalgia calls and only store-bought will do, so we put eight products through a blind taste test to find the very best.

How we set up our taste test

If you grew up enjoying eggnog during the holiday season, chances are you’ve got some preconceived biases. That’s why it was paramount for us to taste these eggnogs blind. We poured each nog into an unmarked carafe, from which we poured our samples. We tested our eggnogs without the addition of alcohol to gauge the drink on its own.

We refrigerated the eggnogs until just before tasting (no one wants room-temperature nog). We also cleansed our glasses and palates between sips (thanks, sparkling water) to ensure each sampling had a fair evaluation.

How we picked the products

There are a lot of eggnogs on the market. We determined early on that this taste test wouldn’t include eggnogs made with alternative milks—a distinct category with its own set of textures and flavors. (But if that’s what you’re in the market for, test kitchen editor Kendra Vaculin’s top nog is almond-based Califa Farms.) We also narrowed our list to classically flavored eggnogs (i.e., no chocolate or pumpkin-spiced versions, etc.) but included packages marked “vanilla-flavored” since traditional versions often include vanilla notes.

We began our selection process by polling for staff favorites, then researched winners from taste tests around the web to ensure we weren’t missing any important players. Since this is a seasonal item, a few widely distributed brands, such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, weren’t available when we tested and had to be left out.

How we evaluated

Everyone agreed the best eggnog should have a balance of sweetness and spice. Warming holiday flavors like nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, and cloves were welcome, but a few wary colleagues mentioned they’d been jolted by overly cloying cartons of eggnogs past.