Best bottled water to buy according to a water sommelier - Drinks

Aug 19, 2023

Think all bottled water is the same? You'll want to read this.

Bottled water might not be the most sustainable choice, but when you’re travelling, it can sometimes be your only option. In some countries, drinking the tap water could leave you with anything from a nasty case of the thunder down under to something potentially life-threatening like typhoid or cholera.

A bottle of water can also come in handy at the airport so you can top up your fluids before you board. Dehydration caused by the low humidity on a plane can see you lose as much as 2 litres of water on a 10-hour flight. No wonder everyone is so crabby by the end.

But it turns out that you shouldn’t just grab any old bottle of water while you’re picking up your mandatory flying arsenal of gossip mags and Snakes Alive from NewsLink. (Or is that just me?) If you want to ensure you’re hydrated enough for that sprint down the aisle when you land, you need to look at the label first.

How do we know this? We recently stumbled across the wisdom of Martin Riese on TikTok. This guy is a legit mineral water sommelier with more than 500K TikTok followers. His videos offer advice on everything from the best water to use in your coffee to the facts on PFAS chemicals and fluoride. But it was his vid on the best water to buy while at the airport that really piqued our interest.

@martinrieseofficial What water you want to get when flying #watersommelier #hydration #flying #plane #water #martinriese #fyp #foryou #lax #fy #foryoupage #airport ♬ original sound – Martin Riese

The biggest takeaway from the video is that if you see something that says ‘purified water’ on the label, put it back. ‘Purified water’ literally just means processed, filtered tap water. All those lovely minerals that water naturally contains and that your body needs – things like sodium, magnesium, potassium and zinc – have been removed. Instead, you should be looking for ‘spring water’ or ‘mineral water’ on the label. These guys haven’t had all their minerals stripped, and will also likely taste better, especially if they’re in a glass bottle.

And yes, while we’re aware that beer also happens to contain minerals, a caveat: the alcohol in that pre-flight schooner will act as a diuretic. This means that not only will you lose even more water than usual while in the air, you’ll also annoy all the passengers that you’ll need to climb over to get to the toilet every five minutes.

When it comes to choosing a container, Riese recommends buying water in a glass bottle over a plastic one. “Water is a universal solvent and always looks for stuff to dissolve,” he says. Research has shown that chemicals from a plastic bottle, from as bisphenol A, phthalates and even microplastics, may leach into the water. While it’s unknown how this affects human health, you’re less likely to get that plasticky taste that some people find unpleasant.