Top of the drops

Australians continue to splash out on bottled water regardless of the price and taste, spending $600.7 million to quench a collective thirst of about 600 million litres in 2012.

Now a blind tasting of a selection of still, sparkling and tap waters by Fairfax wine critics Huon Hooke and Ralph Kyte-Powell has turned up interesting results.

"The sparkling waters were far more interesting than the still," Hooke said. "We could see more reason to pay good money for a bottle of good Italian or French sparkling water than we could still water."

The results for the sparkling waters were led by France's Badoit ($3.75/330ml) with a score of 18 out of 20, closely followed by Australia's Capi ($2.99/750ml) with 17.

Capi mineral water burst out of the blocks about 12 months ago after the company spent about five years selling mixers and fruit sodas.

"It about time for Australian mineral water," owner Pitzy Folk said. "All our chefs are talking food miles and local and we keep selling French, Italian, Swiss, German mineral waters, which are all owned by multinational companies and we've got all this beautiful water in Australia."

Sourced from Lauriston, near Kyneton in central Victoria, Mr Folk said his products were now in about 300 Melbourne restaurants and 60 in Sydney.

"The last six months have been a huge explosion for us. Once you believe in something you have to get behind it."

On bottled still water the judges questioned why pay for it when Melbourne's tap water was of decent quality, receiving a score of 11 because it was "simple, earthy, clean and quenching".

It was a different story with Sydney's tap water, which scored six – the worst of all waters tested. Hooke and Kyte-Powell judging it was "dirty, dusty with a slight hint of chlorine".

"The discovery of the tasting was how well Melbourne tap water stacked up against the bottled still waters," Hooke said. "When it comes to value for money, there's no contest. Indeed, it's my belief that if you filter your tap water, it's perfectly good, and competitive with most bottled waters."

Melbourne's tap water score was higher than still waters by Pump (7), Splitrock (8), Fiji and Mount Franklin (9) and Another Bloody Water (10).

Reigning in the still water category was Norway's Voss ($4.79/800ml) in its cylindrical bottle with 16 then Evian ($2.39/500ml) at 14 and Spain's Solan de Cabras ($4/550ml) at 13. The highest ranked Australians were Capi ($2.99/750ml) and Snowy Mountain ($1.39/lt) both earning 12.

Analysts IBISWorld reported the top three sources of bottled water sales in Australia were in supermarkets and grocers at 35.4 per cent, convenience stores and petrol stations with 32.7 per cent and pubs, hotels and restaurants with 14.5 per cent.

It said sparkling mineral waters such as San Pellegrino and Perrier dominated the restaurant category but demand has slowed since 2008-09 because of customers' environmental opposition to bottled water.