A glass of tap water has been rated superior to mineral waters costing thousands of times as much in a Decanter blind tasting.
Decanter's panel made up of Masters of Wine, top sommeliers and some of the most experienced palates in the country voted the tap water supplied by utility company Thames Water third equal in a tasting of 24 waters.
The top-scoring water was Waiwera, from New Zealand, which sells for £9 a litre at Claridges. This was followed by Vittel, £0.39 in Tescos.
Joint third was Thames Water's standard tap water, drawn from a kitchen tap in South Kensington, London, costing less than one penny (£0.09918) per litre.
The water is pumped from the Thames and treated at one of four water treatment works to the west of London, namely Ashford Common, Hampton, Kempton Park and Walton.
Ranked alongside Thames Water was Iskilde, 900 times more expensive at £9 per litre at Claridges. It comes from an aquifer in Denmark covered by alternating layers of quartz-sand and hard clay.
Anthony Rose, wine critic of the Independent newspaper, nominated the tap water as the one he thought was the most expensive. Terry Threlfall, sommelier at Michelin-starred Chez Bruce in London, picked it as his favourite, giving it 19 points out of 20.
In 18th place was the most expensive water was the 420 Volcanic, at £50 a litre at Claridges is 5000 as expensive as tap water).
Bling H2O, from California, at £40 a litre the second most expensive, came 22nd out of 24. Its bottle is encrusted with Swarovski gems.
Bottom was the filtered tap water, drawn from the standard staff water fountain found on each floor at Decanter's publisher IPC Media's headquarters in Southwark.
Decanter editor Guy Woodward said the tasting was instructive in showing up the 'outrageous' prices charged for mineral waters which rival the 'scandalous' markups on wine.
'It's bad enough that restaurants get away with charging largely ignorant consumers scandalous mark-ups on wine, but charging £5, £10 and £20 for a resource which is freely available is an outrage particularly when even the most well-trained palates couldn't tell these supposedly superior products apart from plain tap water when tasting a range of waters blind.
'In fact, most tasters preferred the tap water.'
Waters in ranked order
Waiwera New Zealand £9/litre (Claridge's)
Vittel France 59p/1.5l (Tesco)
Thames tap water - £0.09918/l
Iskilde Denmark £9/l (Claridge's)
10 Thousand BC British Columbia £15/75cl
Fiji Fiji £1/33cl
Speyside Glenlivet Scotland £5.50/75cl (Claridge's)
OGO The Netherlands £6/33cl (Claridge's)
Aqua Deco Canada £15/75cl
Lauquen Argentina £9/75cl (Claridge's)
Aqua Panna Italy £6/75cl (Claridge's)
Antipodes New Zealand £9/l (Claridge's)
TyNant Wales £1.29/75cl
Finé Japan £15/72cl (Claridge's)
Evian France 70p/2l (Tesco)
Tau Wales £5/75cl (Claridge's)
Solé Italy £5.50/75cl (Claridge's)
420 Volcanic New Zealand £21/42cl (Claridge's)
Veen Finland £3.85/l
Volvic France 55p/l (Tesco)
Karoo South Africa £3/l
Bling H20 USA £20/50cl
Glaciana Norway £9/50cl
IPC Media filtered tap water (£0.1208/l)
Read the full panel tasting review with tasters' assessments in the February issue of Decanter, out on 2 January 2008
Have your say... To post your comment on this story, email us at news@decanter.com, making sure the relevant headline is in the subject field
I would be most interested to know more about your staff water fountains supplying the filtered water which was rated so badly in this taste test. Is the water supplied in bottles or filtered at the point of use and which type of filters are used?
I have always found filtered water much more palatable than straight tap water.
A Mills
While I have no doubt that the illustrious tasters involved in the blind made accurate assesments of the quality of the waters, their value is determined not by the critics, but by the market. As with wines at auction, if the market's perception is that a given product is worth X, then it is so. If one disagrees with the market's perception of the value of a certain product, one is free to not purchase that product. Further, to take this opportunity to yet again accuse restaurants of egregious markups on wine is another example of an apparent misunderstanding of restaurant economics. Pricing in retail outlets is, as a matter of course, significantly lower than that of restaurants.
Retail has a lower overhead and higher volume of sales than that of restaurants, so a lower markup is to be expected. Everyone wants great restaurants to be around for their enjoyment, but so few are truly willing to support them by spending the money required to keep them open.
Troy Smith
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I would be most interested to know more about your staff water fountains supplying the filtered water which was rated so badly in this taste test. Is the water supplied in bottles or filtered at the point of use and which type of filters are used?
