Water, Water Everywhere

If you were born before the year 1990, you may remember the days when bottled water meant a choice between Evian (on the tennis court), Perrier (as an aperitif), and Hinckley and Schmidt (in a paper cup at your doctor's office). You may remember that when you went for bike rides you inserted into your water holder not a bottle of fresh mineral spring water, but unfiltered tap water held in a mildly carcinogenic plastic squeeze bottle. You may even remember the advent of Clearly Canadian, a drink that rolled around in 1988, and tried, far ahead of the curve, to make drinking water not just a practical necessity, but a sugary party in your mouth.

These days, the experience of shopping for bottled water is akin to the experience of shopping for luxury denim in the mid-aughts, or cupcakes since Sex and the City aired: The market is completely saturated, prices are inflated, and it?s pretty hard to determine where the value is. A quick search for bottled water on Amazon.com reveals nearly 200 distinct brands. Would you like your water caffeinated? Or extracted from 3,000 feet under the sea? How about infused with anti-aging chemicals? No problem!

Even when it comes to the most basic of unflavored bottled waters, the range of options can be confusing. Everyone has an opinion about which brand represents that platonic ideal of water-drinking and which brands fall short. But how deep does brand loyalty go when you have no idea what you?re drinking? We decided to put 11 Slate staffers to the test?to a blind taste test, specifically?to determine if anyone can really taste the difference.

Our methodology was simple: Out of the 11 water brands with the highest market share in the basic, un-enhanced category (based on a Beverage Digest report from May 26, 2011), we chose the four whose names were best known: Aquafina, Poland Spring, Dasani, and Evian. From the enhanced/flavor water category, we chose the unflavored brand with the highest market share: Smartwater. And then we pitted all five against unfiltered New York City tap water. We served these six waters to our colleagues in plain Solo cups, with no indication of which brand was which. We asked each guinea pig to list his or her favorite and least favorite bottled water brands; to rate each anonymous sample on the basis of deliciousness on a scale of one to five; to describe the water's taste; and to guess which water it might be.

The results, from dirty dishwater to purest elixir of life, are below.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=4b936612ca88a1023a2bf9856e68209a

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