"There is a difference in both taste and texture between the waters," insists Magnus Cormack McManamey, sommelier at Bourke Street's Bottega restaurant. McManamey recently introduced a water list at Bottega, which contains 11 different waters. It includes spring and mineral waters sourced underground and a rain water from Cape Grim in Tasmania - 750ml of the latter will set you back $12.And"Rain water has always been my favourite," says McManamey. "But I do enjoy informing people about the subtle differences between the different waters on our list."
So subtle that for most of us, the choice between bottled waters comes down to a far more insidious influence - marketing. Since most of us can turn on the tap and get good quality water that is safe to drink very cheaply, getting people to fork out those $12 means convincing them they're buying something more.
Water is water. In Australia, there is no advantage in drinking fancy bottled water. Many people fall for the marketing hype. Australian tap water is perfectly fine to drink.It's kind of funny, really. But there's a serious side. Apart from the fact that high-priced boutique waters provide a classic example of the privatisation of a natural resource by stealth, the boom in bottled water comes at an environmental cost. It's heavy for a start, so moving big quantities long distances just pumps out those greenhouse gases. There's also the issue of all those plastic bottles: California's Container Recycling Institute recently found that about 90 per cent of PET bottles end up as landfill.
Maybe some of us should consider filling up used bottles at the tap. And when you drink this fine tipple, swill it around your mouth, savour the delicate flavour and you'll find it tastes like water.
Better to re-use a bottle and fill it with water from the tap.
Now there are millions of empty plastic bottles that end up in landfill (but hopefully consumers are wise enough to recycle them).
If I did have to buy water, it would be Fiji Water or Valvert. Just something about the taste...
(not to scale)
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Work was busy today.
2 comments:
Fiji water is my favorite, as well. I mostly refill a plastic bottle with tap or filtered water. At work there is a filtered water tap by the regular tap. Tastes fine to me!
What books are you neglecting? I haven't had time to read a book since January. The last book I read was "The Kite Runner."
-Bogdan's investor
I am one of the guilty masses who buy bottled water--usually Fiji or Evian.
When we lived in a small farming community, we had well water which tasted fabulous, so we never bought bottled water. But then we moved to the city and found the water to be disgustingly bad. Even filtering it doesn't help.
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