OnTap Magazine

A fter the hour-long call ends, I go straight to Pick ‘n’ Pay and do something I’ve never done before. I head directly to the water aisle and start reading labels. I am a label reader by nature – I want to know what’s in the food I eat and how one product compares to another. But I can honestly say this is the rst time it has ever occurred to me to look at the makeup of H 2 O. I mean, water is water isn’t it? at is what I thought until I chatted to Candice Jansen, the rst water sommelier in South Africa and one of only around 100 in the world. “We are pioneering a movement,” says Candice. “Water is usually the rst thing to arrive on the table when you visit a restaurant and the last thing to leave and yet it’s something that most people give little consideration to. Water is so important but is generally side-lined.” Candice’s quali cation comes from the Fine Water Society, a US-based organisation founded by Michael Mascha. e website fascinates me – it has everything that I enjoy about working in the beer industry – competitions, conferences, courses, tasting information for global brands – except instead of beer, the products are high- end bottled waters. I had no idea there was a community out there that geeks out about water the way I do about beer. And just as beer nerds talk about their beloved beverage as “craft” or “artisanal” or “microbrewed”, so do water enthusiasts have a preferred moniker for their drink of choice: ne. WATER SPEAK “Fine water is a natural product with a story and a taste,” says Candice. “Water for thirst is di erent than water for taste and a ne water is one which is designed for the epicurean table.” It’s a fascinating concept to me. I am generally a tap water drinker. Even in the fanciest of restaurants, I shun bottled water and request a jug of tap water, preferring to save the rands to put towards a glass of wine or another beer. But as someone with more than a passing interest in beverages, I’m intrigued by the idea of water tasting and indeed, the concept of pairing water with di erent foods. I had hoped to join Candice for a guided tasting, but our plans for a meetup were scuppered, as most plans these days are, by the pandemic. When I suggest the possibility of us both going out and buying the same waters to taste together over Zoom, I am given a response that reminds me of my early days studying to become a beer judge, when we largely dissected lager after lager, week after week, most other styles unavailable to us. “Unfortunately South Africa doesn’t produce waters that would give you a tasting comparison so buying waters o the shelf won’t help in anyway in tasting water,” Candice says. “You need to have two waters that are di erent in TDS and taste pro les to experience the di erence. ” at term, TDS, comes up a lot in our conversation. It stands for Total Dissolved Solids, and it plays a crucial role in the avour pro le of water. e TDS level tells the drinker what the total mineral content of a water is, the number re ecting milligrams of dissolved mineral solids per litre. A higher mineral content a ects both the mouthfeel and avour pro le. Most bottled waters in South Africa have a TDS that falls into the “low” category (50-250mg/l) with a handful scraping into the “medium” category (up to Australia's Three Bays has a TDS content of 1300mg per litre, boasting 23 different minerals NEVAS was the world's first cuvée water, created from two different springs Iskilde means "cold spring" in Danish, referring to the chilly temperatures at which the water emerges from the ground ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2021 | 37