“Not the most taste-neutral” is a very polite way to put it.
It tastes like water with sand mixed in. I can actually find it locally in Charlotte, and I’m always very happy to pass as that stuff is truly vile.
We drink mostly Polar Seltzer - on the higher carbonation end. More so than Perrier, for reference to a common brand. Similar to Topo Chico.
I settled on Gerolsteiner a couple of years ago. And TJ’s at $2.29 ea versus WF at $3.59 is very pleasing.
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I’ve found Saratoga to be snake oil. It is now owned by Polar/BlueTriton Brands, Inc. and the water doesn’t come from Saratoga.
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Again, they get it from multiple different spring, none of which are close to Saratoga, not naturally carbonated. It is now snake oil. It was sold to BlueTriton Brands, Inc. in 2019. Maybe it was better before?
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I haven’t had it for quite a while since I drink mostly still … but the Blue Triton connection means no more.
Is shipping water around the globe the best use of fossil fuels?
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Where is the line drawn? Water? Wine? Beer? Bananas?
I just don’t see how filling a glass bottle with Italian water and shipping it to the U.S. makes a lot of sense. When it comes to water, any mineral content and carbonation level can be replicated, so why ship it 5,000 miles when you can make the identical thing here.
I don’t think the same is true of wine. As far as beer is concerned, most imported European beer tastes like shit (and nothing like it does in Europe), so I would say no to shipping beer too, though for a different reason.
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I chose Mountain Valley water because it is the best domestic sparkling mineral water I know. I agree that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ship water across continents although I still don’t know how far away is too far to ship. Like you say, it’s pretty easy to adjust any water to attain something ones likes in terms of mineral content and carbonation levels so even shipping Mountain Valley across the country mostly on easy gliding rails doesn’t seem practical.
I drink well over 90% European wine. Probably close to 99%. But I still wonder if that really makes sense when I know I could be pretty content drinking from the US and even just from California and/or Oregon.
Even though Anchor was making stellar beer prior to the revitalization of the US craft brewing industry, it was imports from England and Germany that really got me interested in the early 80s. Then it was things like Mendocino Brewing, Sierra Nevada, Anderson Valley, and Deschutes that really got me into it. I didn’t live near any of them except Anchor. Being able to try the different styles really broadened my world. I don’t know if my appreciation or perhaps even the boom in domestic brewing would have occurred without the imports.
Manufactured water? Horrors.
-Al
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Has nobody ever done a blind water tasting, that would be rather interesting.
I would think the bottle bias would exceed that of even wine.
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I really believe many geologic carbonations have a much finer bead and different taste than anything you can do by adding carbonation.
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I imagine that is true, at least in a practical/cost sense. Perhaps if CO2 was forced in very slowly and gently it could produce a pretty fine bead but it may not be worth the extra cost to most people.
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Funnily enough I have. We did one with sparking waters as a “first round” in a wine tasting. I called out Borjomi and Topo Chico correctly, and had a general preference to European waters. I think we had about 15 waters to drink.
American waters had much more pronounced carbonation, flavors were pretty much identical. Topo Chico is easy to call based on its borderline violent bubbles, and Borjomi tastes like sand and that stuck out like a sore thumb.
Never drink heavy water.
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You drink a little every day, which is fine. But if that was all you drank it would not be good, not because of any radioactivity (assuming D2O), but just because it’s heavier.
-Al
For once I don’t get your humor.
Actually, wasn’t intended to be humor. There is some naturally occurring deuterium in water, very rarely would there be D2O but rather a little D-H-O with a deuterium replacing one of the regular hydrogens (protium). Tritium is another hydrogen isotope, not naturally occurring in any significant quantity although a bit is created by things like cosmic ray collisions (and man made things). Tritium is radioactive, deuterium is not. But, water is fundamentally important in biological processes and it acts differently when one of the hydrogen atoms is roughly twice as heavy (or if two of them were). There is lots of evidence that significant amounts of deuterium in water interferes with biological functions and even evidence that deuterium depleted water is healthier than natural water (the water with deuterium interferes with cell repair, deuterium depleted water inhibits proliferation of tumor cells, etc).
It’s kind of an unusual case where it isn’t the innate chemical bonding or any radioactivity that causes the problem, simply the fact that deuterium is roughly twice as heavy as hydrogen and our cells rely on processes that are altered by the heavier weight.
-Al
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ISO