CHAIRMAN’S COLUMN
The shape of water With the joys of La Nina re-visiting us once more, I’m staring out my window at the moment, observing a non-stop deluge of insanely heavy rain that hasn’t stopped for three days straight. Not surprisingly, it leads one to ponder water.
I
remember hosting a whisky tasting event for the Society nearly 15 years ago where we explored water in a bit of detail. As part of the night’s fun, we presented a blind tasting of three different waters and asked all attendees to try and identify which water was which. We had tap water, Mount Franklin Spring Water, and Evian Mineral Water. (All still; no sparkling). The results on the night were interesting: Not surprisingly, with two cleaner or “purer” samples for context and comparison, everyone correctly picked the tap water — the presence of chlorine was the giveaway, even though it’s in relatively small concentration in Sydney’s system. Roughly two thirds of the room correctly identified the Evian from the Australian mineral water — it had a flavour profile and also a “texture” that stood out far enough from most folk’s benchmark or “normal”. 11
