Questions on Etiquette for Table Water

Should all bottled waters be served in the same shaped glass? Or do sparkling waters, like beers and champagnes, retain their liveliness in a tall narrow glass rather than in one that is wide and so enables the fizz to dissipate too rapidly? There might also be some foods that require sparkling water, while others that have delicate flavors might best be appreciated with still waters.

Water Inquiries Run Deep

Considering the status bottled waters now enjoy, we can probably expect that soon a new brand of connoisseurship will develop and vintage waters may not be far away. If the wines differ from year to year, why not the waters of a particular spring or well? Is the water from Vichy, Contrexeville, Saratoga or San Pellegrino the same every year and in all seasons, or should bottles be marked with the date of bottling? Should the waters of May cost more than those of December and is 1983 any better than 1982? 

And should all bottled waters be served in the same shaped glass? Or do sparkling waters, like beers and champagnes, retain their liveliness in a tall narrow glass rather than in one that is wide and so enables the fizz to dissipate too rapidly? There might also be some foods that require sparkling water, while others that have delicate flavors might best be appreciated with still waters.

All of this came to mind after reading a letter of complaint about waiters who serve bottled waters that have been opened before being brought to the table. Such a practice is unacceptable when wine is served, because there is always the chance that the wine being poured is not really the bottle’s original contents. The label, therefore, may not accurately describe what is being poured. It might be of humbler origins than the label indicates or it might even be the combined leftovers of other bottles. Etiquette then dictates that wine should be opened in front of the customer.

Why not then water? It is perfectly possible for a domestic club soda to be poured into a bottle marked Perrier, or even for tap water to be used in place of one of the still mi neral waters such as the Italian Fiuggi.

Another annoying practice when serving bottled water is to add ice cubes to chill it. If one wants mineral water for its purity, why then dilute it with the tap water used to make ice? Unfortunately, few restaurants have sufficient refrigerator space to chill bottled waters in advance, but since the sale of such water is highly profitable, proper space should be created.

In Europe, it is not unusual for bottle waters to be chilled in wine coolers, especially if customers order large bottles that must be kept cool but not cold throughout the meal.

The custom of automatically adding lime or lemon to bottled water also seems to be a mistake, for if the clarity and purity of the water itself is to be appreciated, why add the sting of citrus unless it is requested? Even when customers ask to have bottled water plain, it often arrives with the lime already in it. Needless to say, one hopes waiters or busboys would not pour ordinary water into glasses half filled with mineral waters, a gaffe that can be avoided if one type of glass is restricted to plain water only.

Clearly as mineral waters become more popular, more attention will have to be paid to the correct way of serving them, and a prescribed modus operandi seems in order.—By Mimi Sheraton, New York Times Service, 1983

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia