Water?

Despite Formidable filtration plants in the major cities, most tap water today is undistinguished, barely worthy of the chemical formula H2O. Which presents a problem to those who don't wish to mix good whiskey with chlorine on the rocks, who like their rocks to be clear rather than cloudy and who enjoy their coffee strong and fresh rather than something akin to wormwood. The solution: bottled aqua--domestic and imported, sparkling and still--now offered at watering spots as divergent as supermarts, gourmet shops and health-food stores across the country.

From a purely hedonic standpoint, bottled waters are beautifully free from the offensive (continued on page 188) Water? (continued from page 108) color and odor of waters flowing from most city taps. The number and variety of bottled waters have now reached floodlike proportions. Many of them in this country are regional, taken from springs running beneath the earth or from city water systems and then carefully processed. Some prestige waters have been served for generations in superposh restaurants and private clubs, and cost as much as some wines. At the other extreme are waters allegedly purified on the spot by vending machines at 20 cents a gallon. Among all this variety, the best way to keep your head above water is to hold a tasting session, using three or four waters from different countries and sources. You can make a party out of it. If the people you've invited don't show the same spontaneous enthusiasm they'd normally feel for a wine- or cognac-tasting affair, quickly explain that, after a variety of straight waters have been judged, the same liquids will then be tested for their mixability with fine bourbons or whatever potables you select. Most panelists who for the first time taste waters consecutively are surprised at the differences. Occasionally, there's an individual with an uptight palate, to whom all water is simply something wet in the mouth. But most people with normally sensitive taste buds will easily and consistently spot the differences in waters.

In theory, tasting water should follow the reverse procedure of tasting wine. When you enjoy the latter, you look for its lovely "robe" (color), its deep aroma, its unique bacchic flavor. By contrast, when you taste water, if there's a perceptible color in the glass, you'd be advised to toss it down the sink; any pronounced aroma is wrong; and if your taste buds detect any vivid flavor, you'll want to turn your back on it. By definition, water is colorless, odorless and tasteless. That definition would be correct if water were merely H2O. But all drinking water (undistilled) contains traces of dissolved minerals from sodium ions to sulphuric ions, and even though they show up only in minuscule quantities, like the small amounts of congeners in whiskeys, they're still forcible enough to make water from one spring different from that of another. In other words, you can expect the flavor profiles of different waters to be low--just as they are in foods such as lettuce or potatoes--but they're there, and when you taste four waters chosen at random, say two French waters such as Evian and Célestins Vichy and two American waters such as Mountain Valley and water from your own tap, the differences are marked. Evian is extremely soft and gentle; Célestins Vichy has a saline flavor that can startle you but for some reason is quite acceptable; the American Mountain Valley is mildly alkaline and mellow; your own tap water, depending on where it's drawn, may be lovely or may cause you to hold your nose as you swallow it.

In practical terms, the technique of a water-tasting party is simple. Be sure to include your tap water as one of the samples. Provide spotlessly clean glasses marked for identification. Bottles should be covered with paper bags or. kept out of sight. Pour the water at room temperature, not iced. Suggest that each water be taken in two or three consecutive mouthfuls before going to another sample. The water may be swallowed or merely held in the mouth briefly.

Some of the oldest, most distinguished bottled waters are those that are naturally sparkling--just as they're drawn from the spring. Organic club sodas, if you please. In the U. S., the best known is Saratoga Vichy Water from the famous New York State spa, commendable because of its high alkaline content, long appreciated as a specific against the morning after. Ramlösa from Sweden is lightly carbonated and completely free of iron and lime. More robust are Appollinariss from Germany and Perrier from France, both with fine-size, long-lasting bubbles; they can be quaffed straight for a vibrant lift at any time or may be used as mixers with spirits. Pellegrino water from Italy contains added carbon dioxide in small quantities.

People who hit the bottle because they're concerned with water fit to drink were thrown off guard a year or so ago when an analysis of bottled waters sold in the nation's capital turned up three well-known brands with bacteria counts far in excess of that of the local product. Washington-area tap-water counts ranged from 50 to 7000 per liter. In three of the four bottled waters tested, Great Bear contained 140,000, Poland showed counts from 50,000 to 500,000, and Deer Park also reached the 500,000 mark. While these counts might seem astronomical at first blush, all waters tested met U. S. Public Health standards; none of them contained bacteria of the coliform group, notorious for causing water-borne diseases. Interestingly, the one water out of the ten tested that turned out to be as pure as any water can be was bottled Mountain Valley from Hot Springs, Arkansas. This is water from the same springs that De Soto reached in 1541 and that were reported by him as a favorite gathering place "of many tribes at peace sharing the recuperative waters." Another famed bottled water from Saratoga Springs has shown in repeated tests that it's almost bacteria-free. In proper perspective, the Washington tests aren't so shocking. A Federal survey of tap waters from 1000 U. S. systems showed that only six out of ten were meeting Federal standards.

As in buying wine, a bottle briefing helps in selecting waters. On the label you'll often see the phrase Mineral Water, which means nothing in itself, since all drinking waters contain minerals. However, many brands with this designation are waters from old health spas such as Saratoga, or Fiuggi in Italy, beloved by Michelangelo; their waters, unchanged from one generation to the next, deserve their eminence. In choosing a spring water, make certain it was bottled at the spring whose name it so proudly hails, just as when you buy a château wine you want to be sure it was bottled at the château. It is always a pleasure to open a bottle of Perrier water and read, "Mise en bouteille à la source." Many Americans remember the bottled water from Poland Spring, Maine. It's now sold as Poland water. The label doesn't mention Maine, but the bottle cap reveals that the water now comes from a company whose office is in Wayside, New Jersey. Even the words spring water can be deceptive, since half the bottled waters now being sold are nothing more than city tap water cleaned up and sometimes mixed with a small quantity of spring water to justify the use--or misuse--of the word spring. Don't be conned by the rhetoric on a label. Such phrases as "pure as a porpoise's heart," "clear as a lookout's eye" provide little guidance to urban hosts who've never had heart-to-heart chats with porpoises or whose lookouts from their penthouse terraces normally reveal a sea of dense smog. Beyond labels, it pays to check the bottle cap, which should be as securely fitted as that on a bottle of beer or brandy. When you lift or unscrew it, it should be clean. Some waters are now put up in plastic containers, which are cheaper than glass; however, many astute water tasters insist that the liquid from plastic containers often leaves a synthetic, nonwater aftertaste that registers on the roof of the mouth.

Among the world's best judges of water are professional whiskeymen. In Scotland, for instance, managers of some of the oldest and most esteemed distilleries worry more about their water than they do about the barley that goes into their mash tubs. Let the small gurgling stream alongside a distillery dry up, and the whiskey made from it would disappear from the market. In this country, the makers of Old Fitzgerald bourbon, who draw their water from a deep limestone well found on their property in Louisville, began selling the same limestone water--in states where it is permissible--in a package along with their bourbon. It cost them as much to bottle water as it did to bottle bourbon, but they were offering it in the hope that the straight bourbon they had babied and aged for seven years would not be watered down with a lackluster liquid.

Whether you mix water with spirits, with a spritzer or with sangria, whether you pour it into a coffeepot or a stockpot or take it straight, it's comforting to know that you don't have to depend on what comes out of your tap. And that's a watery groove.