Water is the new wine

Apparently, the old bottled water joke is: What’s ‘Evian’ spelled backwards? That’s right, with the relative priceyness of certain waters, it’s long been thought naiveté to believe some brands are anything more than filtered tap water. Evian is, of course, sourced from an alpine spring, but many other mainstream water brands are not.

However, for the purpose of this post, I’ll focus on the premium end of the water spectrum. For example, let’s start with a favourite celebrity brand, Norway’s Voss whose cylindrical, cologne-style bottle was designed by former Calvin Klein Creative Director, Neil Kraft.

Next is America’s Bling H2O which comes in a frosted, Swarovski crystal-encrusted, corked bottle. I mean, what else would you order at a Miami South Beach nightclub if you’re a wealthy rapper with diamond-encrusted teeth?

And then there are the iceberg waters which, to my mind, come complete with their own built-in sense of drama and a great brand story.

Meet Canadian: Ron Stamp, who over the past two decades has pioneered both iceberg vodka and iceberg beer, and now believes he’s got the ultimate bottled water. And not just any water. Not even just ‘iceberg water’, but GLACE Rare Iceberg Water.

This water is said to possess “a purity verging on nothingness.” Making it all start to sound like Zen and the Art of Hydration; especially when Ron Stamp tells us that…

“The tastelessness is its own taste… It’s like drinking air.”

Even higher up the price scale is the ancient-sounding ‘10 Thousand BC’, sourced from glacial ice in British Columbia’s Coast Ranges – which makes the ‘BC’ in the name very appropriate.

It’s claimed this ice, also formed well before the age of industrial contaminants, melts down to become the “purest water on the market”; and it’s bottled to the sound of classical music – because, like, that always helps!

Yes it seems there’s a premium water for every taste and every occasion. We’re even entering the age of the ‘water sommelier’. In the States, it’s been a reality for a few years now. But I’m just imagining how this conversation would play out in a restaurant…

Sommelier: “Would Sir prefer the ‘Greenland’ or the ‘Baffin Island’? Perhaps the ‘Svalbard Ice Bear Reserve’ for Madam. It’s a most agreeable match for the halibut.”

And, do you know what, given that glacial water has been ‘ageing’ nicely now for 10 millennia, I’d be thinking ‘they all sound pretty good, surprise me!’

Even here in Tasmania, due to the proven purity of the air and rain in the northwest, we too, have several high-end products including: Tasmanian Rain and King Island Cloud Juice. As with the glacial varieties (yet unlike spring waters) these waters have never touched the ground – and therein lies much of their purity and appeal.

Clearly, these products WILL all have a superior taste to tap water, but in terms of perception, it does bring to mind David Ogilvy’s famous whisky anecdote:

“Give people a taste of (the inexpensive bourbon) Old Crow, and tell them it’s Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it’s Jack Daniel’s. Ask them which they prefer. They’ll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images.”

And that’s a big part of it right there: ‘tasting images’. I can’t think of two words that better encapsulate branding and advertising – whether it’s for a drinks product or not.

So where will it end? Short of sourcing frozen water directly from one of the Martian ice caps, what’s next for premium water? Let’s hope it doesn’t go the way of coffee beans – ‘enhanced’ by the stomach enzymes of Indonesian civet cats – at $50 a cup!

Read the full iceberg water article here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-iceberg-water-20101121,0,7134330.story