Water is probably the most boring beverage on the planet. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the zillion-and-one flavoured and enhanced waters available on the market – we may need water to live, but that doesn’t mean it’s our drink of choice. It’s mostly tasteless, totally clear, and doesn’t even get you drunk (as opposed to vodka, which is mostly tasteless, totally clear, and, used properly, gets you utterly wasted) – not exactly the most appealing drink on earth.
I know, I know – there are places on earth where clean drinking water is a precious resource, nearly or entirely unavailable to those people unfortunate enough to inhabit said areas. But let’s be fair: if you’ve got internet access – and the luxury of using it to visit sites like this one – you’re probably living somewhere where lack of drinking water is not an issue. If anything, you’ve probably got more of it than you need, you selfish bastard.
So back to my point: there is a decent-sized industry centred around finding ways to make water “better,” or at least more interesting. I ran into a relatively recent (at the time of this writing) entry to this market while at Jungle Jim’s International Market a couple of weeks ago: blk.
Not being much of a water drinker myself, and definitely not one to pay a premium price for a speciality water, I just about ignored blk. entirely. But then, walking past a rather large collection of bottles, I noticed something about them that I had missed the first time around. The bottles were clear.
Looking at the above photo, the problem with this statement should be immanently apparent: if the bottle is clear, than it’s contents must be providing the black colour.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’ve drank plenty of coloured beverages, including black ones (rum, tea, cola, etc.) in my lifetime, but those all received their colours in conjunction with their flavours. blk. was not, as far as I could tell by the bottle, flavoured. Nor did it contain any artificial colourings. Rather, blk. was “naturally black” due to the “blend of fulvic acids” added to it. Suddenly, I was interested – after all, how often does one get to drink black water that isn’t horribly poisoned in some obvious way?
Oh, yeah – it was also on sale. So I got a bottle.
Pouring a glass of it – mostly to examine it’s colour outside of the bottle – my interest grew. It was just so…black. Coffee black. This was no ordinary water – it was an unfathomable mystery waiting to be solved! Would it provide me true refreshment, beyond that of it’s inferior clear counterpart – or would, perhaps, it prove a potent poison, rewarding the drinker with nothing other than certain death?
Eyes open to savour every possible aspect of the experience, I closed my eyes and raised the glass to my lips…
…and it tasted pretty much like water.
Disappointment surged around me. Despite its unusual colour, it didn’t taste any different from a normal glass or bottle of water. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t like water from a bad tap or high school fountain. But compared to any other glass of filtered, clean water, there really wasn’t any difference in taste.
I’m not really able to comment on the fluvic acid and it’d healthy effects – I’m not a doctor or dietician, and I only had one bottle myself, so I can’t report on how great it feels (or doesn’t, or whatever) when you drink it every day – but really, who cares about that health bullshit? I bought this water because it was black. BLACK. It says it right in the name! I should have realized, I suppose, that colour and flavour do not necessarily correlate, but that does not mend my broken heart.
My adventure had ended – my result? I paid two dollars, on sale, for a bottle of water that was indiscernible in taste from the water from my fridge door filter.
I’m going to go drink a Mellow Yellow…
…and I’m putting vodka in it.
