Luxury hydration options for the Haves and the Have Yachts
Apparently, there is more to water than
still or sparkling.
With more than 4,000 brands of natural water globally, there are now water sommeliers to guide you through menus of the clear stuff in restaurants and hold tastings for serious water enthusiasts. Presumably a spittoon at these tastings is not necessary. You can go hard, not spit and still drive home.
At high-end restaurants in the United States mainly, one can now ask for a “luxury hydration option” in the form of a water list. It will, of course, list country of origin and source options including, iceberg, cloud, well, artesian, condensation deep sea and spring. Water harvested from Chilean fog (not making this up) is probably going to be one of the most expensive. Labour costs for the fog catchers of the Atacama desert can’t be cheap.
Then there’s the cost of transport across land, glamorous packaging, sea and road freight to a white tablecloth near you. Carbon footprint be damned. A 10 cent container deposit will not apply but you can always use it for a vase. Oh well. (See what we did there? So many puns, so little time.)
A good water sommelier will be able to discuss and recommend based on factors such as minerality, hardness, carbonation, pH and, most intriguing of all, “virginality”. A bottle of the purest virginal water will certainly be more expensive than a cheeky wine made from old root stock.
Eau de Tassie Tap
The cleanest tap water comes from countries you might expect: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Canada and New Zealand. TasWater’s (the equivalent of our SA Water) Fern Tree plant won the latest national title of Australia’s Best Tap Water and their Rossarden plant won the world’s best at the Berkeley Springs International Water tasting event.
Enough to make your eyes water
Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the most expensive water in the world. A 750ml 24-carat solid gold bottle (see above left) retails for $72,000 USD. How good would that look on the mantelpiece behind Trump in the Oval Office?
Fillico (above right) is Nunobiki Spring water from Kobe’s Rokkou National Park which is filtered through volcanic rock. Prices start at US $1,000 per litre and go to several thousand for limited editions. Sadly, production is limited to 5,000 bottles per month. The old, treat -’em-mean-keep-’em -keen school of marketing. As there is a limit to purity in the world of water it’s the packaging that sends the retail prices into the stratosphere. Every bottle is a handcrafted work of art adorned with Swarovski crystals, gold and decorated with royal symbols. The House of Christian Dior has pampered its VIP clients with Fillico and in 2008 it was a sponsor at the Cannes Film Festival. Surely some ended up in handbags when the lights went out.
