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Feature article
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Elizabethton, Bluff City tops in water taste test
By Fred Sauceman
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“This is the most water I’ve drunk since I took the high dive with my mouth open,” said Webb Griffith as the First Annual Tennessee Water-Tasting Competition dripped down to its last few sips Sunday at Butler’s Iron Mountain Inn.
Between tasting 23 different waters, some from mountain springs and some from city faucets, judges spouted forth descriptions like sprightly, sharp, flat and “similar to a raw potato in the mouth.”
Webb and his wife Gloria, with the Watauga Water Alliance, joined local wine writer Dick Church and my wife Jill Sauceman on the judging panel, around a 150-year-old cherry table that belonged to innkeeper Vikki Woods’ great-grandmother, Grace Fortescue.
A water competition in Northeast Tennessee was Vikki’s idea.
“I was at an innkeepers conference in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, and someone mentioned it,” Vikki told me. “I thought it was a great idea, especially in conjunction with our desire to preserve, protect and promote Watauga Lake and the Watauga River Valley watershed.
“So I contacted the speaker from the conference and got all the information. Then I contacted Arthur von Wiesenberger, who has written the definitive booklet entitled ‘The Taste of Water,’ and got the criteria, descriptions and water-tasting terms.”
Dick, who writes a weekly wine column for “The Loafer,” says tasting lingo for wine and water is similar.
“The principles are the same — flavor, aroma, aftertaste. And it’s important to put your nose in the glass and inhale.”
Judges were forewarned not to wear any cologne. The tasting was quickly halted when Jill thought she smelled paint or varnish in the air. I was sent out to the front porch to shake down a Kentucky couple for signs of distracting fragrance, but they were clean.
Glasses were positioned on numbered paper plates for quick identification, and when Vikki uncapped her felt marker to label the next set of plates, Jill pinpointed the offending smell. It was the ink.
Each water was served at a temperature of 68 to 70 degrees. Judges held samples up to the dining room lights to look for any suspended particulate matter and to evaluate color, then plunged their noses into the wine glasses, swirling and aerating samples like they would a Bordeaux or Burgundy.
After nearly three hours of judging, the top waters in the municipal category were from the Lambert Market area in Elizabethton and from Bluff City.
Dick described the Bluff City water as “sprightly, with a sharpness to it.”
The winning entry in the spring and bottled water category was from Hampton Spring, water that would eventually get into the town’s water supply.
Jan Standish, who recently moved to Johnson County from Pagosa Springs, Colorado, collected the water, knee-deep in the spring.
“I went to the utilities office in Hampton and asked where the town’s water comes from,” says Jan, who is a professional trainer of Border Collies. “They directed me to this wonderful spring across the street from the utility district, an enormous pool with fountains, where the water comes directly from the spring.”
The second place winner in that category was the water from the Iron Mountain Inn’s well, tapped right out of the faucet.
Pleased with the day’s results, Vikki plans to expand the competition next year to include waters from throughout Southern Appalachia.
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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