{"id":2686,"date":"2025-12-11T14:04:58","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T14:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=2686"},"modified":"2025-12-11T14:04:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T14:04:58","slug":"not-into-wine-try-water-tasting-the-capes-latest-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=2686","title":{"rendered":"Not into wine? Try water tasting, the Cape\u2019s latest hit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"textFreeArticle\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/iframe.iono.fm\/e\/1627899?layout=modern\" width=\"100%\" height=\"170\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>J<\/strong><strong>EREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> Now in the Cape Winelands there is, I read, a new luxury experience and it\u2019s not wine. A Stellenbosch estate is offering water tastings at R295 per person, where guests, as I understand it, compare still and sparkling mineral waters from around the world, all created by a certified water sommelier.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s part of a growing trend in high-end tourism, where purity, terroir and provenance are applied to water just as they are to wine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I want to explore this in a little more detail. I\u2019m in conversation now with Nico Pieterse, international water sommelier, to explain why people are paying to taste water and what they think they\u2019re getting. Nico, a very warm welcome to you and be patient with me, for listeners who haven\u2019t heard of water tasting before, what exactly are they experiencing and why is it worth it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>NICO PIETERSE: <\/strong>Hi, Jeremy. I\u2019ll tell you all of those things. Thank you for having me on the show. Water is not just water and water from all sources around the world tastes differently because of the minerals in the soil.<\/p>\n<p>Listen: Mastering cellars: Bringing wine from soil to glass<\/p>\n<p>You can get very unique waters from around the world. Some of it may be from volcanic origin, or basically water that rained on or around a volcano, then siphons through into an aquifer, and you get loads and loads of minerals in that water.<\/p>\n<p>Where the other one, the opposite, would be water from a glacier in Svalbard or in Lofoten Islands in Norway, where you get a glacier that\u2019s maybe been around for 200 000 years. The glacier is now melting, and before that water can run into the ocean and become salt water, they will bottle that.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s quite an emotional experience to have a glass of water that fell as rain about 200 000 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As a sommelier, what I then do is I take the taste of that water, and I pair that with a wine, a whiskey, a brandy or with some food, and it actually complements the wine, the brandy, the whiskey or the food, which is really interesting and it\u2019s not something you\u2019d expect water to do.<\/p>\n<p>Read: 2025 is turning out to be a great year for wine<\/p>\n<p>But from all the waters in the world and there are loads and loads of sources all around the world, and in South Africa, we look at the minerals inside that water and the more minerals, the more taste the water would have.<\/p>\n<div class=\"visible-sm-block visible-xs-block m1010\">\n<div class=\"ad-container-wrapper\">\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>How does our South African water stack up then?<\/p>\n<p><strong>NICO PIETERSE: <\/strong>South Africa\u2019s got quite low\u2026 So we measure the minerals in TDS or total dissolved solids. Now, in the tasting room, I have a local water that I use with a TDS of 345, which is milligrams per litre and that would be the highest one in South Africa that\u2019s commercially available.<\/p>\n<p>In the tasting also, I go up to about a TDS of 4700. It\u2019s a water from Armenia with very high mineral content and it\u2019s a very interesting tasting water. So the TDS is 4700 on the Armenian one.<\/p>\n<p>That also has a very interesting story because with still water, I love pairing still water with wine, because once we carbonate water, carbonation or the CO? is acidic and it lowers the pH [potential of Hydrogen] of the water. So I don\u2019t like pairing carbonated water with wine necessarily.<\/p>\n<p>I love pairing it with food or sparkling wine, whereas the still water I love pairing that with a red or white wine and it just goes better with that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Nico, South Africans, I think it\u2019s fair to say, are wine literate. Do you think that makes us more open to the idea that water can be tasted, differentiated and enjoyed as well?<\/p>\n<p><strong>NICO PIETERSE: <\/strong>I absolutely think so. In the tasting, which takes about an hour, half an hour of that is purely educational.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I tell the taster everything I can about water and how important water is. I\u2019m a water steward. I\u2019m a supporter of water, and I protect water. But I also want to educate.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There\u2019s a lot that people don\u2019t know about water, and water really is the most important thing on earth for human beings. There really isn\u2019t anything else for health and for survival, except maybe the sun.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I think South Africans have a lot to learn about water.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I think the whole world has a lot to learn about water and, on my own, at my little tasting room, I try and change the world. One tasting at a time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>What\u2019s been the reaction from guests so far? Is it curiosity, excitement? Or maybe, as I started this conversation with you, a degree of scepticism?<\/p>\n<p><strong>NICO PIETERSE: <\/strong>One hundred percent scepticism. But that is changed in the first 15 minutes of the tasting. I\u2019ve yet to have a person who wasn\u2019t able to taste the differences in the water and appreciate the tasting. It\u2019s an important bit of education that people really need to have.<\/p>\n<p>Listen\/read: Is investing in whisky casks as smooth as the tipple itself?<\/p>\n<div class=\"visible-sm-block visible-xs-block m1010\">\n<div class=\"ad-container-wrapper\">\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT:<\/p>\n<p>CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>On a social media platform, on an article, I get very interesting comments because people think water is just water, but it really isn\u2019t. The fact that I have so many comments on social media about \u201cI\u2019d rather buy a whiskey or a brandy and Coke\u201d or \u201cI\u2019d rather drink water from the hose\u201d.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Those myths all get fixed up in the tasting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Once we know a little bit about water, you either love me or you hate me because I get you to read your mineral bottle labels, and I get you to understand what really is in tap water. So tap water is 100% necessary because we need water, but it\u2019s also the most processed water in the world.<\/p>\n<p>So you just need to know what to look for in tap water and what to possibly take out if you can.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Can I push you a little bit on taste? You talk about the terroir in water. Can you give me a practical example of how water from one region tastes different from another? But maybe if you can verbalise or articulate the actual taste itself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NICO PIETERSE: <\/strong>Ooh, it\u2019s not a difficult question. The minerals basically are salts and the salts are electrolytes, and that\u2019s what we need for survival.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a product that you add to a glass of water \u2013 I don\u2019t want to say the name necessarily \u2013 but it\u2019s a hydration product, it\u2019s in a little packet. So without the sweetness that would be a higher TDS water.<\/p>\n<p>So if you think about that, without the sugar in it or the sweetness in it, it\u2019s salty. Sometimes it\u2019s very smooth, depending on whether you have magnesium in there, magnesium and calcium and silica make the water smooth, and that goes really well with the red wine.<\/p>\n<p>Read: Luxury brands turning to bespoke experiences<\/p>\n<p>Whereas water without that goes really well with a white wine. If you want a coffee that\u2019s a nicer brew coffee, you use a water with a high magnesium content because the magnesium extracts more sugar out of the coffee bean, and it also makes your coffee smoother.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s a mouthfeel. It\u2019s definitely salty because the minerals are salts. Alkalinity can affect the taste on the sweetness side. If the water is more alkaline, it will taste a little bit sweeter. Also, the texture might be a little bit more soapy. But yeah, you get wonderful waters out there and it\u2019s a conversation that needs hours to discuss this [chuckle].<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Nico Pieterse, I\u2019m going to leave it there, thank you so much for talking to me today, international water sommelier. I do appreciate your time.<\/p>\n<p><em>Follow Moneyweb\u2019s in-depth finance and business news on WhatsApp here.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script data-cfasync=\"false\">\n            !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n            {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n                n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n                if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n                n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n                t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n                s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n                'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n            fbq('init', '779812924991616');\n            fbq('track', 'PageView');\n        <\/script>#wine #water #tasting #Capes #latest #hit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can also listen to this po&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[2781,711,683,2780,2041,2779],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}