07-07-2025
Water sommeliers say the simplest drink is the future of luxury
SIX ESTEEMED sommeliers sit silently behind a judging table. A waiter tops up their glasses one by one and they appraise the stuff: sniff, hold it to the light, sometimes swirl, sip, swish between cheeks, dump the extras and give it a score. But the liquid is no Zinfandel or Syrah. Instead the bon viveurs are tasting high-end waters.
The competition launched this year's Fine Water Summit in the swanky Buckhead neighbourhood of Atlanta, Georgia. With 1,100 bottles imported from 35 countries, it is the biggest event of its sort. The assembled connoisseurs—from Hong Kong to France and California—have paid $975 each for a weekend of talks and tastings co-ordinated by Michael Mascha, the group's Austrian founder, who lives in Texas. Most are middle-aged, very foodie and unusually fit. Many are among the 250 water sommeliers ordained by Mr Mascha's academy. Months of training have taught them to appreciate how minerality changes water's flavour, how silica affects its mouth-feel and the size of bubbles its acidity.
The waters taste as different from each other as wines do. One, from the glaciers of the Lofoten Islands in Norway, does indeed taste like melted snow. Another, from the highest volcano in the Peruvian Andes, is bitter and salty—not your correspondent's favourite. Nico Pieterse, a sommelier who runs a tasting room on South Africa's Western Cape, likes to pair the first with sashimi and the second with fried foods or anchovy pizza. As the attendees sample still and sparkling varieties, Mr Mascha comes by with a spectacular bottle. The 'Fromin" is 15,000-year-old Ice Age water from what is now the Czech Republic. Floating in it are flakes of gold. 'I don't bring wine to parties, I bring this," he says. 'For the rest of the evening no one wants champagne any more."
Mr Mascha is a food anthropologist who collected wine before his doctor told him to ditch it. For ten years afterwards he switched to fine water. He was mercilessly mocked: at a live television event in Las Vegas he was given toilet water to taste. Now nearly 40 restaurants, some with Michelin stars, offer full 'water menus", thanks to his evangelising. Youngsters less keen on booze are taking notice. Doran Binder, an effusive blonde-bearded sommelier, has gone viral on TikTok. After buying a failing pub in the English countryside he discovered that his land produced some of the world's 'creamiest" water. He now sells trendy cans of it by subscription. He reckons corporate water companies are scamming people into drinking poison-infused water; restaurants too often ruin the good stuff by serving it with 'chlorinated ice cubes and a slice of fucking lemon".
The summit is sponsored by Lake, a cryptocurrency firm that wants to decentralise the water industry. The aqua enthusiasts are eager for more people to invest. Elena Berg, a sommelier who doubles as an environmental scientist at a Parisian college, sees the movement as a way to talk about how precious clean water is as climate change threatens access to it. But to many in Atlanta this weekend it is more about enjoying life's small pleasures. Mr Pieterse, the South African, wants to put scannable barcodes on the bottles so you can listen to the water trickling at its source while sipping it. Doing so would allow customers to simply revel in the fact that they are drinking something that a mammoth once drank, too.
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