The normal‐incidence reflection spectrum of a tapered highly reflective (∼95%) surface‐wave grating is found experimentally and theoretically to have high sidelobes due to the taper‐induced spatial variation in the local Bragg frequency. In order to successfully use tapering for reflection sidelobe suppression, the Bragg‐frequency variation is compensated by varying the grating period. Experimental results are presented for the reflection of surface acoustic waves from metal dot arrays onyz‐LiNbO3at ∼145 MHz. The taper‐induced distortion of the reflection spectrum is expected to occur in corrugated optical waveguide reflectors as well.