LUXURY HYDRATION

You've heard of fine wine. Now meet fine water

- Story by KIM SEVERSON / NYT

recently spent 90 minutes watching six very serious people taste 107 varieties of mineral water.

Each container was hidden under a cloth bag, its contents dispensed by small pours into wineglasses. The judges swished and gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance. They dumped the excess into buckets at their feet and joked about needing a bathroom. They gave each water a score between 90 and 100, in a modified Robert Parker style.

The comparison to paint drying might seem obvious. But like a Magic Eye poster, the nuances of fine water become clear if you spend enough time with it.

Fine water — the preferred term of its growing cadre of enthusiasts — is as much like that plastic bottle of water in your car-cup holder as Château d’Yquem is to Gatorade. The taste is distinct to a place, rich with minerals it picked up as it travelled to the surface of the Earth. The fine-water crowd shuns giants such as Perrier and Acqua Panna, both owned by Nestlé. Fine water has a better story.

Winners at the April tasting, part of the ninth annual Fine Waters taste and design awards in Atlanta, included melted snow that had been filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock, and deep-sea water that had been pumped up 130km off the coast of South Korea. There was water gathered from nets hung in a misty Tasmanian pine forest, and a Texas brand laced with lithium called Crazy Water.

Like coffee and beer, natural water is enjoying a third wave, especially among the alcohol-shunning Gen Z, which has primed its palate on seltzers such as LaCroix and is looking to level up. It’s also gaining traction among the wellness crowd, which has grown increasingly sceptical of municipal tap water and purified water in plastic bottles.