T.O. 's water 3rd best in taste test

Now I want to go to Oklahoma City and some place in Kansas and find out what's so excellent about their water, I've always quite liked Toronto's tap water.

City judged against 10 U.S. entrants

Jun 26, 2007 04:30 AM
Jennifer Bain
Food Editor

Toronto tap water has won third place in a blind North American taste test.

Sure, we lost to Oklahoma City and a county in Kansas, but these aren't bad bragging rights considering it was the first time we'd entered the Best of the Best Water Taste Test.

"That's excellent – I feel great," Patrick Newland, director of water treatment and supply for the city of Toronto, said yesterday. "This gives us an opportunity to compete at a different level at other shows."

But he had an important caveat: "Our water is second to none. We're very lucky here in Toronto."

So what does a winning water taste like? In a word, nothing.

Great tap water should be "clear, crystal and have a nice taste without having any flavours associated with it," judge and emcee Prof. Mel Suffet of the UCLA's School of Public Health said yesterday.

The liquid contestants were couriered or hand-delivered to Toronto for the American Water Works Association annual conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Ten waters had already won U.S. regional competitions. As host city, Toronto got the 11th spot.

Five judges (including me) privately tasted the "blind" samples – knowing them only as numbers 1 through 11 – and at room temperature. It was a cinch to eliminate six for smelling like chlorine or tasting salty, earthy or musty.

Five waters (the more neutral of the lot) moved on to the finals, where they were relabelled A through E. We tasted and scored these live in front of a crowd of curious conference-goers.

Like a wine tasting, we sniffed and swirled before sipping and swirling some more. Unlike a wine tasting, we didn't get to spit anything out.

"I'm drowning," confided judge Djanette Khiari, project manager with the American Water Works Association Research Foundation. (She chairs the taste and odour committee.)

"Good" water got marks of one to four. "Better" water got five to eight. The "best" water got nine or 10. Our quest was to pinpoint the most tasteless and odourless water, but we were encouraged to let personal preference drive our rankings since this was a fun (and not deadly serious) competition.

Suffet and Khiari, along with California environmental consultant Michael McGuire, were considered properly trained technical judges. They have even co-created a "Drinking Water Taste and Odour Wheel." Mill St. Brewery brewmaster Joel Manning and I – both with jobs that demand plenty of tasting – stepped in as local judges.

Pros or not, we had virtually no problem agreeing on who the finalists should be.

"Beer's mostly water," Manning said.

"We take Toronto municipal water, filter it, treat it and make beer out of it." He wasn't sure that he could pick out Toronto's water from the group of 11, but described it as "fairly chlorinated."

It turns out that I put a star beside water number seven and gave it a perfect score during the first round. Taste test organizer Kylah Hedding later revealed that #7 was Toronto's finest. For round two, however, Toronto's water was relabelled "water B" and I thought I detected chlorine so gave it a lower score.

Organizers had only planned to release the first-place winner, as in the contest's previous two years. But in the frenzy of the moment they named second and third place winners after tallying the scores.

So what makes Oklahoma City's water better than ours?

McGuire described it to the audience as "really refreshing" and "terrific." I had to admit to the emcee that I couldn't come up with anything to say to capture the water's screaming neutrality.

"That's good," Suffet replied. "When you have nothing to say about a water, that's good."