Top bottled waters

Hi
Don't know about the top one but I can tell you that the carbonated variety from Lidl is bloody horrible.
Regards
Jim

i dont drink evian - its naive spelt backwards!

Steve

Is tapwater so execrable in the UK that bottled stuff is better? I feel sorry for you.

Christchurch tapwater is so good that it tastes better than bottled mineral water.

Deane

It's fine here in Glasgow. I know that water in England can be very poor in some areas.

Over-treated ?

PS: Add Strathmore and also Malvern to your list.

Normally I drink tap water.

But by far the best bottled water is Badoit - naturally effervescent, slightly salty, with a kind of biocarb of soda alkalinity. Great for the digestion and for cleansing the palate, and delicious when served chilled with a slice of lime.

It is truly the king of mineral waters, and blows Vichy and Perrier out of the water (sic).

Kevin (BBC Radio 4)

I heard that statistically London tap water has:

a) been through seven people on average.

b) circa two molecules per pint "of" the Queen on account of the fact that she pees into the same sewerage system, and then (a).

I don't suppose either is true, but it beats talking about house prices.
Does anyone else find that tap water (London, high calcium, "hard") tastes far worse somehow as ice cubes?
We now make ice with mineral water, and certainly coffee via a stove-top steamer is far better with bottled water. How pretentious! Still, £4 on Illy justifies a bit more on the only other ingredient I guess.

Can't say I've ever "ranked" waters though. The worst I ever encountered was in Moscow - a ghastly Russian concoction that tasted of stale seaweed and bubblegum. The tap water, however, had visible wriggling things!

Rod (currently drinking a delightful Touriga Nacional from Portugal)

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Is tapwater so execrable in the UK that bottled stuff is better? I feel sorry for you.

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No it isn't. Our tap water is fine - i've just knocked back half a pint of the stuff to finish my night's beer drinking.

I still wonder why we pay more than 10 times as much for the stuff as the French when their tap water is at least as good as ours.

A 1/2 litre plastic bottle of water in the UK costs as much as the same quantity bottle of Franziskaner hefeweissbier in Germany.

And that's before you get 10c back on the return of the glass bottle.

Domestically produced bottled water like Highland Spring or Ashbourne Water is as costly as the stuff we import from France.

The nation with the best tap water going IME was in Slovakia. It came from mountain springs anyway. In comparison their bottled water was fizzy and tasted like it had pebbles in it.

Rip-off Britain or what?

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Wed 27 October 2004 at 1:54.]

Off-topic, but I'll never forget listening to a writer being interviewed on the wireless and recalling that when he came into a small town in Texas he found forty-seven different types of beef jerky in the supermarket - but only one brand of mineral water.

Deane

San Pellegrino is the business.

I completely agree with Simon: San Pellegrino's the daddy and the carbonated version is the best of all I've tried to date. I like the stubby packs they do as well, even if they are expensive.
Can't help thinking the whole things a bit of a racket though,particularly when the cost of bottled mineral water in other European countries is so much lower. Typical of the U.K though: we seem to overpay for pretty much everything...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Steven Toy:
I still wonder why we pay more than 10 times as much for the stuff as the French when their tap water is at least as good as ours.

Don't forget Steven that a lot of our water treatment plants are owned by the French, American in fact anybody but the British . One of course could ask How can any Foreign Company own the water that falls from the skys in Britain,most bizarre.I have no objection with them owning the other end of the Water treatment business, except that they keep "dumping" the residue on us all But if Coco cola can sell us at highly inflated prices our own tap water in fancy Bottles perhaps we only get what we deserve.
oldie.

Oldie - Coca Cola didn't get away with this as you might remember and withdrew the product under a cloud of controversy and adverse publicity. However, I recall it was a cynical and calculating marketing ploy aimed a scamming the British public and it would have probably been successful had it not been for the media latching on and running a public lynching.
I read at the weekend that we're being severely ripped off by the coffee importers: coffee beans have reduced by something like 67% in the last 5 years whilst the consumer has only seen an average of about 7%: yet again, we're being taken for mugs. From now on I'll be buying my mineral water with the wine, fags and beer I get in France and Belgium....

jlfrs,
you may well be right regarding Coca Cola, but I do remember ,not that many weeks ago reports that they were considering re Marketing it again[ to high a investment in advertising the product to just forget that they had been caught out] but the point I was making was that people actually bought the stuff and thought that they were getting something special,a superior product, not just common or garden tap water, The powers of suggestion to gullible minds, just shows how susceptible we all are.
oldie.
PS no it's the coffee growers that have been and still are being ripped off, not us at least we can afford to drink the stuff ,they can't even afford to eat.

Didn't know that Coca Cola were planning to re-introduce their bottle london tap again: I'll certainly not be lining up to buy it on principal!
As for coffee producers, its well known the growers are financially exploited,(like the people who make sports shoes in Asia), which is why "Fair Trade" coffee exists.This I think is a different point to the one I was making which is essentially that the British consumer seldom sees a decrease in the world price of a product. However, it's a different story when prices increase,(such as oil)....

Coca Cola were reported to be in negotiation with a landowner (farmer) in Derbyshire (I think) to use the water for their Dasani sp? brand of water

According to a documentary on the BBc (Money Program - I think) CC play second string to Pepsi Cola in the marketing of bottled waters and they want to be top dog in the market.

Our local water taste strongly of chlorine when used in tea or cooking so we have to use Morrisons (nee Safeways) cheapest water - I dread to think were it comes from <g>

Derek

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It's much the same here in Hants: for coffee and tea I use a Brita filter for the tap water: it's absolutely excellent at stripping out the chlorine and hardness and particularly noticeable with tea which with ordinary tap water stains the china and has a nasty layer of scum on top. Also preserves the life of the kettle to boot....

jlfrs - we are in S Hants, we will be getting the water from a different source

Derek

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I'm near Fleet Derek having moved recently here from Bucks where the tap water was far worse.
I tried living with the "water at source" for a couple of weeks but it really didn't taste good at all, hence the Brita filter. It needs changing every month but it's worth it....
Just out of interest - which Naim dealer do you go to? Any recommendations?

Audio T at Chandlers Ford I have been going to that building to get my HiFi fix since 1976 when they were Hampshire Audio, Audio T took them over in 99 ish and then they added Naim to their stock.

I have been treated well by them. No complaints.

The Brita filters on our water made the water taste very metallic (do not ask how metal tastes) so that is why we do the cheapest water in bottles stunt.

Yet it is amazing that Gales can make decent beer from the local water - they do have their own well I understand.

Derek

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Yet it is amazing that Gales can make decent beer from the local water - they do have their own well I understand

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They do indeed have a well but I believe that they 'Burtonise' the water by adding gypsum.

Ringwood do the same but they don't have a well.

Audio-T in Basingstoke and Reading both do Naim (Camberley used to). Also PJ Hifi in Guildford.

Basingstoke Audio-T have a Naim evening tomorrow (28th) but I cannot remember what they will be demoing...

I won't be there as I have a better offer

Following a well publicised polluting of drinking water in the Middx area around '98 I have only drunk bottled water. I found the Tesco variety in the big 5 litre bottles just fine. If you have more refined tastes then you might want to consider Evian et al but you'll pay for the priveledge! What's wrong with Volvic? Failing that why don't we support British companies' products; like we do with naim?

Mole Man

Having been brought up in the North East of Scotland (Elgin) I was spoiled by the quality of the tap water there. Certainly the water in the Glasgow area is pretty vile with a strong taste of chlorine - I never drink the tap water here.
My favourite bottled waters are Badoit and St Yorre (which is very similar to Badoit, but even more so).

Put the local stuff through the Brita and its fine. I have not found a bottled water that I can't live without so far.

Howard

I feel sorry for you guys having to buy bottled water, it's just not part of my reality. We have 2 sources, well/borehole, both from pure underground sources that only supply my house, no water bills, hell we even bath in it!

Maybe I should look into marketing it? How much does a litre of water cost nowadays?

Barnie - do you live in Evian by any chance?

BLT - I stayed in a place called Port Appin near Oban over new year and the water was fed straight into the house from the stram nearby. The letting agent said this is common in Scotland - do you know if this is so?
Nobody wanted to drink it though as it was the colour of stewed tea and very soft and peaty,(great for a single malt no doubt!.
It took a great deal of getting used to for showers and baths - psychologically, it just didn't seem right to be showering with brown water,(even though it had gone through a rudimentary purification process), though it was probably purer and safer than "conventional" tap water...