Matching, Harmonizing & Pairing Bottled Water and Food

Mouthfeel is the most important of the factors guiding the way bottled water is matched with food. Mineral content and acidity play more minor roles.

Creating a matrix matching all foods with bottled waters would be impossible, and it would surely take the fun out of experimenting with various combinations. The rules below should be taken as starting points for an exploration. Use them when water is the only beverage you are serving. (The next section describes how to choose water when you’re also serving wine as the meal’s primary beverage.) The percentages indicate how much weight the factor should be given in making your choice.

If water is consumed alongside wine, different considerations apply: The water now plays a secondary role and needs to be matched with the wine, not the food. This is very important, you don’t want water and wine competing with each other for attention.

Much bottled water and mineral water is really bottled municipal tap water—in the United States, government and industry estimate that municipal water makes up twenty-five to forty percent of the bottled water sold. American bottlers are also permitted by the FDA to label water as spring water even when it’s treated with chemicals or pumped to the surface through a well near a true spring. For example,wells across southern Maine pump water to be sold as Nestlé’s Poland Spring, which is sourced neither from Poland Spring nor any other spring. It’s helpful to make a distinction between two different kinds of bottled water.

For centuries, humans have been drinking water at the natural temperature of its source or storage facility. Only recently have we begun manipulating water’s temperature.