In my previous experiments with making colored ice balls, I found that the color from food coloring in water didn't evenly distribute, even though it made pretty patterns.
Surprised, I froze some of my own ice balls by filling the molds with juice – I tried grape juice, cranberry juice, and Vitamin Water.
All had nice and even color distribution. So this is a good trick for adding additional flavor to cocktails that slowly infuses into the drink over time.
An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.
In researching water in both both distilled spirits and at serving, I came across Martin Riese, a water sommelier. He is the General Manager at Ray's & Stark, a restaurant located at the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA).
He is developing a water program for the restaurant, and has his own water brand, hilariously called Beverly Hills 9OH2O.
I asked him for an email interview and he kindly consented. The interview is below, slightly modified in some places for clarity.
How did you become a water sommelier?
I had in 2005 the idea to create a water menu in the restaurant which I worked (in Germany). We had 1500 different wines and I always thought we needed to have a selection of waters to pair with the wines. The idea was a huge success, we started with 14 different waters and we ended up with over 40. I could almost not believe how different all the waters can taste and which impact they had to the wine and food experience.
The media attention which I received gave me the name of water sommelier. So, I do not have really a certification as a water sommelier but I learned learned everything during the job and during a lot of tastings and matching.
Where else are there water sommeliers in the USA?
I've known that for several years a hotel in New York had a water sommelier, but I don't know of a list or other water sommeliers who are working in the restaurant industry right now.
What will the water program be like at Ray’s & Starck?
The hardest thing right now for me is not to create the water menu, it is to get the waters into the United States. We are not talking about the regular waters which you can get in every grocery store like Voss or Fiji. I want to show my guests the variety of waters like Iskilde from Denmark, which has a very unique earth taste, or Vichy Catalan which is very salty and high in minerals.
The program at Ray's will feature around 20 different mineral waters. It will be not a regular list; it will be more like a small book with a lot of information. Every water will get one whole page with a picture of the bottle, the mineral content, a small chart how the water will taste,; and a story about the water, where the spring is and why the water is so unique.
I read the book Fine Waters [read about that here and here and here]. Do you categorize water in the same way as the author Michael Mascha? What do you do or how do you think differently than he does?
I highly respect Michael Mascha. He was one of the first ones here in America who realized how important is to drink the right water. And exactly that is the challenge here in America. For 99 percent of Americans, is water just water. In Europe people have a different background on the topic water. Just in Germany we have over 580 different water brands. People are very aware of the difference in water.
In America most of the time guests order tap water, with ice and lemon. Here in Los Angeles, tap water is filtered so the mineral content is very low, and chlorine is added for sanitary reasons. Imagine now you enjoying a great red wine with a good amount of tannins. The chlorine of the tap water will overpower the fruit nuances, the extremely chilled-down water will completely ruin your experience, and the acidity of the lemon is not pairing with the tannins of the red wine.
I like to help my guests and it is amazing for me to see how wines and spirits can change by just the right water which you are drinking beside it.
I’m concerned more with water and spirits more than water and food pairings. Have you explored that very much?
My main focus was always pairing water with food and wines. When I started at Ray's & Stark Bar I met Paul Sanguinetti my mixologist (and the restaurant's sommelier). It was amazing that we both shared the same ideas and it was amazing for me to explore the different waters with different spirits.
Some distillers say that you should serve/dilute whisky only with low or medium TDS (totally dissolved solids, the mineral content) levels. In Fine Waters, he also recommends staying away from high TDS waters with mixed drinks. Why is that?
I agree for whisky. High TDS waters have a very strong own taste, they can be almost salty. You want to enjoy the original taste of the whisky and you do not want to alienate the taste with the high minerals.
But in mixed drinks it can be very interesting and I think there is a lot to explore for the bartenders and mixologists here in LA. The taste of water can be used to bring the cocktail to the next level. For example, the same cocktail made with a low mineral water will be more likely smooth, with a high mineral water you will add some spice to it.
I am always giving the example of the movie Ratatouille, where the rat is explaining the different taste with colors. One mineral has the color red, the other green, add the different taste of the spirits, like blue and yellow, together it can become a firework. But be careful, by adding to many colors (different tastes), the colors are not bright any more .
Do you have an opinion on ideal brands (or styles) of water for drinks such as the Scotch and Soda? Vodka Soda?
Lots of people think that mineral water is automatically soda water. That is not true, mineral water can be still or with carbonation. Soda water is a water which has a high content of CO2, and that is exactly the most important thing for mixing it with drinks.
When you would use a mineral water which has a medium content of CO2, the mixed drink would not have enough carbonation. I think every single bartender should choose his favorite brand. Just do the test, buy several soda waters , taste them by themselves and then make the same cocktail with different soda waters. For sure every single bartender will find the right soda water for there concept.
I prefer a water with a medium mineral content, to give the drinks some support, but every bar should do a tasting and they will come up with the 'right" water.
I’ve been playing around with individual components of mineral waters. I’m wondering if you have tasting notes for individual mineral salts in water: sodium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc. Or have feelings about waters that contain a lot of any one of them.
The mix of different minerals in each water is interesting. That's the reason water has such a big variety from salty to smooth, from bitter to sweet. Just minerals by themselves have following tastes:
Sodium = salty Calcium = bitter, sour – actually calcium has his own taste which scientist discovered several years ago Magnesium = slightly bitter Potassium = salty – sour
Photo by Sven Doornkaat. Property of Martin Riese
Beverly Hills 90H2O
I asked Riese for information about his water brand. The below is from the press release with additional info from Riese.
PH 7.5 TDS 390
Actually that is the amazing thing, when you drink the water it feels like a very low mineral water, but it has a good amount of minerals to be the perfect match with good wines, spirits and food
Beverly Hills 9OH2O, World’s First Sommelier-Crafted Water, Launched Globally
Inspired by the crafting of champagne and fine spirits, a team of fine dining experts led by the world's preeminent water sommelier Martin Riese has created Beverly Hills 9OH2O, the world’s first sommelier-crafted water.
Pristine spring water from the Northern California Mountains is crafted with natural minerals using a proprietary patent-pending formula. It is designed to have the ultimate taste profile, and is best enjoyed gently chilled to 59°F. The resulting masterpiece is alkaline, highly balanced, and the perfect pairing to fine foods and wines.
Beverly Hills 9OH2O is made available in limited editions of 10,000 individually numbered glass bottles. Each edition features unique custom art, making every bottle also a highly desirable gift and prized collectable.
The water is available for purchase online for the rate of $164 for a 12-bottle case of liters.
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
Back in April I visited the Fernet-Branca distillery outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Some of you may remember me tweeting about it. Well, it's about time I gave it the formal write-up.
Fernet-Branca owns two distilleries: the main one in Milan, Italy, and this one in Buenos Aires. In past years there used to be many Branca distilleries in different countries (including the US), but as global shipping has become easier this model makes the most sense.
Production began in Argentina around 1905 or 1908 and has continued ever since. The current distillery was built in 2000 and it already at full capacity.
Surprisingly, the Fernet-Branca we drink in the US is made in Milan. The Fernet-Branca made in Buenos Aires is consumed mostly in Argentina but also South/Latin America.
I didn't directly ask if the Fernet-Branca made in Buenos Aires is made to the exact same recipe, but if you compare them side-by-side you can tell it is not. The stuff made for the local market is less sweet than the international version (makes sense given that they always drink it with Coke, never on its own), and some bitter elements seemed to be different in a way I can't describe. Also, the proof was different than the international version but I believe recently has changed to conform with the Italian one.
They do, however, willingly admit that they use only three different ingredients than in Italy: The base alcohol is a local 95% ABV sugar cane distillate, and the sugar cane is local as well. The water is also local, coming from an underground river in the area. Another local ingredient used is chamomile, but the same flower is exported from here to be used in the Italian production as well.
Unfortunately pictures were not allowed in the distillery, so below is the verbal tour. I should also note that this is not a distillery at all: the base alcohol is distilled elsewhere. This is the blending and aging facility, but to make it easy I'll just call it a distillery.
Herbs and Spices
The first room we passed had the smell of caramel, and in fact that's where they were making the carmel coloring for Fernet, which they appeared to be doing by heating and stirring sugar in big tubs.
Most of the work in making Fernet-Branca is doing tons of separate infusions and macerations to get the flavor from the herbs, barks, roots, and spices into the spirit. Thus, the rooms that we walked through were full of different types of stainless steel tanks of a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
Some were small simple tanks, some were huge vats, some had stirrers and filters on them; some were sideways roller tanks that slowly rotate. Our guide told us that some ingredients are infused into alcohol; others into water. Some infuse separately; other ingredients are combined.
The longest infusion of any ingredient in Fernet-Branca is for 90 days, but our guide couldn't say which ingredient that was. We saw piles of burlap bags of chamomile, zedoria, and other spices from India, Spain, Africa, and Iran stacked in different rooms. Other herbs are kept in a refrigerated room. They store 2 years' worth of ingredients just in case there are any supply chain problems down the road.
Aging Fernet
Beneath the factory is a huge basement that stores tanks for aging Fernet-Branca. There are six cellars, plus two additional climate-controlled warehouses. These are full of gigantic wooden vats (one of them holds 100,000 liters!) aging the liqueur. Two of the smallest vats at the distillery date back to around 1908 and were used at the Italian distillery before being sent to Argentina.
Each tank ages separately, but before bottling they pour the Fernet-Branca into one tank that is connected to a series of other tanks by tubes. They only draw the finished product out of the last tank, so this is a way to marry and blend a great quantity of the Branca for consistency.
Production
The factory is running at full capacity making 4 million cases every year, and presently and they are expanding to double that over the next few years.
They also make Branda Menta here, Punt E Mes, and they bottle Borghetti coffee liqueur.
Drinking Fernet-Branca, Argentinean-Style
Mix it with Coke. They never drink Fernet-Branca on its own; I'd hazard a guess to say that almost nobody has ever even tried it neat there.
It's funny that to us Fernet and Coke sounds repulsive (while to them drinking Fernet-Branca neat sounds like drinking radiator fluid), yet it's not actually that bad. They seem to treat it like an everyday cocktail like a Gin & Tonic, but I actually didn't mind it as a digestif after a meal.
Bowmore's master blender Rachel Barrie recently performed a similar experiment, though she didn't name the source of the waters. But it turns out they were pretty similar to the waters I tasted, and her results echoed my own. I love not being totally wrong.
But the truly exciting thing is if we combine the results of her tasting with what I've learned about regional waters of Scotland, we see that the water from certain regions of Scotland, when added to whisky, seems to bring out specific taste qualities in the whisky for which those regions are known.
In other words, if you dilute a whisky with water from Islay (or in the style of Islay water based on mineral content and pH), it seems to emphasize Islay-ish flavor notes in the whisky, no matter where that whisky is from.
Okay, let's get started. First lets see how Barrie's waters compared to the ones I tasted from UisgeSource.
Highland Water: hard water, high in minerals. 225 parts per million dissolved solids and high in nitrate, calcium, and magnesium. pH around 7.7 (lightly alkaline)
Mineral-rich, with above average concentrations of Calcium and Magnesium minerals, high hardness and an elevated pH of 8.
Speyside Water: soft water, low in minerals. 125 ppm dissolved solids. pH around 7.8 (lightly alkaline)
Soft water with low conductivity, hardness, minerals and polarity with pH 7.
Islay Water: higher natural acidity. 183 ppm TDS. pH around 6.3. High in sulphate, potassium, sodium, and chloride.
Acidic water with higher Sodium chloride and Potassium sulphate, lower Calcium and Magnesium and pH 6-7.
As you can see, the waters we each tasted were pretty similar to each other. The only not-major difference was that the pH of Barrie's low-mineral water was more neutral than the water I tried. So I think it's fair to say that we tasted basically the same style of water.
Now lets compare tasting notes, taking into account that Barrie is the Master Blender and the expert at this, while I'm just making stuff up as I go. Barrie noted that she didn't expect the subtle tastes in the water to bring out dramatic tastes in the whisky, but it did. They conducted a blind tasting with equal parts whisky and water.
UisgeSource Water- My Tasting Notes
Rachel Barrie's Water- Her Tasting Notes with Bowmore 12
Highland Water: The Highland water brought out honey notes from whiskies.
The mineral-rich water unlocked additional layers of floral, herbal and peaty notes on the nose, and provided a more intense and intriguing textural experience (chalky minerality) on the tongue.
Speyside Water: The Speyside water made both the Islay and Highland whisky taste sweet.
The soft water brought out more of the sweet honeyed and citrus fruit notes, and delivered a softer, sweeter and smooth rounded taste experience.
Islay Water: The Islay water brought out the creme brulee and smoke.
The acidic water brought out more peppery peat, iodine and brine with unripe fruits and cereal notes.
While our notes don't agree entirely, we each found that Speyside water brings out sweetness, while Islay water brings out Islay-specific flavor notes like peat, smoke, iodine, and brine.
I've always been skeptical about the bourbon-and-branch concept of pairing a whisky with the water from the same source. In the process of distillation, nearly all of the source water is removed from the spirit, and then it is diluted with purified (usually municipal) water. There is hardly any branch water in a finished whisky, so why bother going through the effort of pairing it?
But yet, if we look at the results of the experiment above, Barrie's tasting notes for what the water brings out in the whisky are pretty similar to the generic tasting notes for whiskies from those regions:
Tasting Notes for Regional Whiskies, from a story I wrote for Imbibe Magazine a few years ago
Rachel Barrie's Water- Her Tasting Notes
Highland Whisky: these whiskies tend to yield a light smoke/peat element and flavors ranging from heathery and spicy to fruity
The mineral-rich water unlocked additional layers of floral, herbal and peaty notes on the nose, and provided a more intense and intriguing textural experience (chalky minerality) on the tongue.
The soft water brought out more of the sweet honeyed and citrus fruit notes, and delivered a softer, sweeter and smooth rounded taste experience.
Islay Whisky: pungent with peat smoke, iodine, and brine flavors
The acidic water brought out more peppery peat, iodine and brine with unripe fruits and cereal notes.
Isn't that awesome? Turns out there just might be something to all that bourbon-and-branch stuff after all.
Note that Barrie wasn't trying to gauge the "best" water to pair with Bowmore. She writes, "Which water and Bowmore combination you will prefer is all down to personal taste. If you prefer a sweeter honeyed taste, adding soft water may be preferred. However, if you prefer the drier/briney tastes in Bowmore, a slightly acidic water (such as the water sourced locally on Islay) may be preferred." Read Rachel Barrie's full experiment and thorough tasting notes here.
This experiment deserves more testing. Here are some projects you and I might try to validate this experiment and take it further:
Survey the scotch whisky producers for more information on their waters. As I wrote previously, even distilleries close to each other may have very different water sources.
Try whisky from each region paired with water from each region. In my experiment, I tried both Highland and Islay whisky and found the waters brought out the same notes in each, but it's worth trying all three of these regions.
Try this with waters from the Lowlands of Scotland, and Kentucky and Japan with those whiskies.
Find commercially-available bottled water that has the same or similar properties to the waters from each of these regions. (I'll get on this one right away.) If I can't find them, I may need to make them myself with what I've learned about creatingmineralwater.
Then repeat this experiment with those waters to see if it still works.
So, yeah, awesome!
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
Basically, Mascha says you match the food or you contrast it, much like any other pairing. However, you're largely not pairing with flavor, you're pairing with texture.
Mascha says 75 percent of the pairing importance should be about the mouthfeel of the water, as measured by the carbonation. Big loud boldly carbonated waters can overwhelm subtle dishes, but would go well with crispy food, for example. He pairs the level of carbonation with the overall mouthfeel of the entire dish.
The next 20 percent pairing is matching the dominant food in the dish (rather than the overall dish) with the water's mineral content. Highly mineralic water has weight to it, and can be paired with big flavors like grilled beef, lamb, and hard cheeses.
The final 5 percent of pairing is fine-tuning the experience with the water's pH level. Waters that are slightly alkaline (basic) can be perceived as sweet, and highly alkaline water can taste slightly bitter. Acidic waters go with fatty food or seafood.
Those rules are for matching the water with the food. However, if you're serving wine at the meal, Mascha says you need to match the water to the wine instead. He says match white wine with still water that has a low mineral content and neutral pH, while red wine can be paired with still water with medium to high mineral content, but still a neutral pH.
In the book, Mascha has a chart of pairings. With grilled beef, use a water with "classic" (normal) carbonation, high minerality, and an alkaline (basic) pH. These are all the 'big' flavors of water. With lobster, he recommends still water with super low amount of dissolved solids, and a neutral pH. These are all the most subtle lack-of-flavors in water.
Finally, you can treat water like you might think of wine and cocktails throughout courses. For appetizers, he recommends starting with a boldly carbonated water, much like champagne. As you move to salad, move to water with the lowest carbonation level. He then recommends switching to still water for a contrast with a light first course, a lightly carbonated water with a second course, then pairing the main course by texture as outlined above. With dessert he recommends still water or very lightly carbonated, but you can work with the pH in that alkaline waters can be perceived as sweet or slightly bitter, making them the dessert or the digestif.
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
The book Fine Waters and the accompanying website have been real eye-openers for me. In another post I wrote about how the author Michael Mascha categorizes bottled waters. In this post I'll talk about how he recommends serving bottled waters. And in another post I'll share his advice on pairing water with food and wine.
Ice
Mascha would prefer that you didn't. He says, "Ice is the natural enemy of bottled water." He prefers serving water at the proper temperature (see below) and avoiding ice altogether. But if you must, make ice cubes with the same water you're serving.
For cocktails, he recommends high-end water with a neutral pH (around 7.0) and low amount of dissolved solids (TDS).
Stemware
"Toasting with a water goblet just looks silly," says Mascha, bemoaning that water glasses as part of stemware sets are shorter and made with heavy glass.
He notes that some manufacturers like Riedel have come out with stemware designed for water that are tall and thin. I'll have to track some down.
Storage
Mascha stores his water in a wine cellar at 55 degrees, which is also about his serving temperature (see below). The International Bottled Water Association recommends storing bottles away from sunlight, at lower than room temperature, and not near strong chemicals like paint thinner. (I suppose that would also prevent accidentally drinking from the wrong bottle. )
Decanting
Recommended for still water in ugly plastic bottles, but otherwise unnecessary.
Serving Temperature
It sounds like 55 degrees Fahrenheit is Mascha's default temperature, especially when comparing brands to each other.
Below is a chart of his ideal temperature for serving bottles of different effervescence, from least to most.
Carbonation Level
Temperature
Still
54F (12C)
Effervescent
56F (13C)
Light
58F (14C)
Classic
60F (16C)
Bold
62F (17C)
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
Below are some of the sources I've been using in the Water Project here on Alcademics. I'll update this page as I use more resources and read more books.
Fix the Pumps. This book by Darcy O'Neil about vintage soda fountains also has information about mineral waters, which were once made-to-order. It includes practical information about how to keg soda waters, and list some not-so-practical recipes for commercial soda waters (as they're 20 liter+ batches), but there is good information about how to properly get minerals into solution with carbonation.
Khymos. This blog has an amazing resource – a list of all the minerals in various commercial bottled waters, plus a spreadsheet that helps calculate how to make versions of them at home by adding your own mineral salts and carbonating. The two relevant pages are the original DIY Mineral Water post and then an updated page Mineral Waters A La Carte.
Craft Cocktails at Home. This book, which is more sciency than it sounds, contains an interesting chapter on water. I published that chapter on Alcademics here, but the whole book is worth buying.
Fine Waters by Michael Mascha. This is the book on bottled water, written by a water sommelier. Not on the history or environmental consequences of it – there are plenty of those- but on categorization of bottled waters by carbonation, dissolved solid content, and pH. Plus there is great information on pairing water with food and wine. Most of the information from the book is also available on his website FineWaters.com.
MineralWaters.org. This site, which looks a bit out of date, lists information about water, drinking statistics, and water analyses. It also allows you do do things like sort brands of water by factors like pH and mineral content.
What to Drink with What you Eat by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. On pages 276-277, they include what to pair with waters of different carbonation levels (based on the Fine Waters scale). For example, Boldly carbonated bottled water such as Perrier and Saratoga Springs pairs with: crispy appetizers, chips, fried food, hamburgers, especially with cheese, hor d'oeuvres, nuts, fried oysters, and pizza.
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
Most books about bottled water seem to trace the history and environmental impact of the industry, but Fine Waters by Michael Mascha is quite a different book from that.
Mascha is a water sommelier and runs the website FineWaters.com, which contains pretty much all of the information in the book as far as I can see. (The book from 2006 is out of print but still available on Amazon and other sites.)
In the book Mascha lays out a categorization scheme for bottled waters, which I'll briefly repeat below.
Bottled Water versus Bottled Water
Mascha is not concerned with municipal waters put into a bottle (the to-go part of it- the bottle- being the emphasis), but on bottled natural waters, in which the water is the important part.
Source of Water
Spring – This is a tricky term because in the US, spring water doesn't have to come from a spring, but can come from a well drilled next to a spring if the two water sources are linked somewhere underground.
Artesian – I thought this was another word for 'artisinal' but I was wrong. Artesian aquifers are basically trapped water under pressure, which will pump itself to the surface if a hole is drilled. Fiji and Voss are artesian waters.
Well – Similar to spring water, but comes from a well.
Rain – rain.
Glacier – Very old water with low mineral content tasting similar to rain water.
Iceberg – Not as pristine as you might imagine, with microorganisms found in old ice and some layers from the 1950s when the air was impure and atomic tests were common.
Lake, stream, reservoir – typically purified before bottling.
Deep sea – melted iceberg water now on the sea floor, pumped up in Hawaii from a 3,000 foot pipe into the ocean. Cool!
Carbonation Level
Mascha says that the carbonation level controls the mouthfeel of water, and is the most important factor in matching water with food. He developed a scale that he calls the FineWaters Balance:
Still – No carbonation
Effervescent – nearly still with some bubbles. Badoit is an example.
Light
Classic – Typical carbonation level we expect from a bottled water
Bold – Big bubbles with big pops, like in Perrier.
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
This is the amount of dissolved minerals in the water. Interestingly, this is different from Water Hardness, which only considers the calcium and magnesium levels of a water. So a water can be hard water (lots of calcium and/or magnesium) but have a low TDS level overall.
pH Level
Acidic water can taste sour. Alkaline (basic) water can taste bitter and have a slippery feel. Slightly basic waters may taste sweet. Mascha says this only account for 5 percent of the overall flavor of bottled water though.
In future posts, I'll cover other topics from the book, which I found completely fascinating.
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The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.
