Bottlemania - Elizabeth Royte [8]
From our spot near the southern edge of Bryant Park, Mascha and I would have had a great view of the reservoir, had it not been torn down in the 1890s to make way for the formidable New York Public Library, upon which we gaze today. Refurbished after a long period of neglect, Bryant Park is now one of the nicest, if most crowded, places to eat lunch in mid-town Manhattan on a sunny afternoon.
I spend a shocking amount of time preparing for my date with Mascha. I pore through Fine Waters, searching for a range of brands to sample. Then I phone half a dozen stores, looking for one that sells them all. Impossible. When the big day arrives, I go on a spree, buying seven waters at three groceries. The bottles are heavy, and my conspicuous consumption makes me feel like a jerk—for reasons I’ll get to later. But at the same time I’m excited. Maybe it is the fancy shops I visit (Dean & DeLuca, Whole Foods, and an upscale deli) or maybe it’s the bottles themselves, from exotic locales, so nicely colored and shaped. Somewhere, a brand manager is pinching herself.
But what food will I pair with our waters? The thought of eating anything at all grosses me out, just a little. What can we possibly have that won’t sully the purity of the water experience? Food seems base and heathen compared to the stuff in these bottles. A quick call to Mascha allays my fears. He doesn’t care what we eat. “The whole idea is to enjoy the food and the water together,” he says. “It’s an experience, not a temple.”
It used to be so much simpler. Water, essential for human, plant, and animal life, is the simplest beverage in the world. Since modern humans appeared, about 150,000 years ago, water has been our basic drink: we imbibe it before we’re born, we beg for it on our deathbeds. Though people can live for weeks without a bite of nourishment, no one can live longer than a week without water, and even fewer days in an arid environment.
From the beginning of human time, access to sufficient clean water was the sine qua non for the establishment of a settlement. Lack of good water cramped expansion, and the search for new sources drew civilization’s map. Waterborne diseases could wipe out entire communities, so fresh springs were protected and fiercely defended. In short, water acted as an evolutionary force.
Large cities must always have more water: they can’t grow without it, and they always find ways to get it. Though it took interference by the U.S. Supreme Court, California got its hands on the Colorado River; Boston took water from the Connecticut River watershed; and New York City captured water not only from rivers upstate but also from communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
After finding water, cities had to protect it—from contamination, and from rivals. They had to store water for future use, and they had to move it around. The Egyptians, Persians, and Chinese figured out how to dig deep wells as early as 2500 BCE, and sophisticated water-storage systems were built in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest and in Syria by 2350 BCE. As early as 3000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians used aqueducts to move water to cultivated fields and to villages for drinking, washing, and controlling fires.
The Romans didn’t start building their famous waterways until the ninth century BCE. But once they got going, they rocked. Over five hundred years, the Romans constructed eleven aqueducts that ran for nearly 260 miles above and below Rome, delivering twenty-five million gallons of water a day. Each ended with a flourish, an elaborate fountain. The hoi polloi collected water from these public sources; richer Romans paid to bring pipes into their homes. It was a pattern, from public to private, that’s becoming increasingly common today.
Anticipating Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate by many hundreds of years, the Romans ranked their water. Springwater from the Aqua Marcia was among the best; muddy water from a lake north of