We love San Pellegrino, a naturally bottled mineral water, for its high concentration of bicarbonate, calcium, chloride, magnesium and sulphate, which give it a rich, lively flavor. Little did we know it is also an antiuric and anticatarrhal (translation: a cure for gout and phlegm).
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MICHAEL MASCHA is the Water Editor of THE NIBBLE and the founder of FineWaters.com, the world’s leading website on bottled water.
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January 2009
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Should You Buy Bottled Water?
Page 2: Naturally Bottled Mineral Water & Spring Water
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Naturally Bottled Water
 These very special waters are beverages that express terroir. Bottled at the source, they may be naturally carbonated and are treated only minimally (if at all). Contact with geological formations imparts a unique mineral composition to each water; many of these compositions are reputed to have healthful properties. Some waters may have been formed only thirty days before bottling from newly fallen rainwater, whereas others are more than twenty thousand years old, the water circulating through the earth’s strata, gathering flavor from the different layers of rock through which it passes. Water can be as expressive as wine. There are waters that are sweeter, saltier, lighter-bodied, heavier-bodied, and so forth. As such, they pair differently with different foods. High-mineral content waters such as San Pellegrino and Gerolsteiner, for example, add vibrancy to sushi and other fish dishes. You can read more about the complexities of naturally bottled water in my book, Fine Waters: A Connoisseur’s Guide To The World’s Most Distinctive Bottled Waters.
Antipodes water comes from a 1000-foot deep pressured aquifer in New Zealand. It spends about 50 years filtering through a substrata of ignimbrite, a fine-grained volcanic rock. Read our full review of Antipodes.
Many companies and individuals care deeply about the water they sell and its source. I talk to them every day, and they could certainly talk about their product all day. They are proud of delivering natural bottled water and obsessed with protecting its source. Some of these companies are new, but some of the waters have been used since Roman times, more than two thousand years ago.
 As we learn more about where our food and beverages come from, we realize how bad processed foods are for our health (read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto). I think we should apply the same attention to water by moving away from “processed water.” Enjoy water as the natural product it is, whether it comes from the tap or a bottle.
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