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

Etiquette of Serving Water

A mid-20th century place setting, with plates and flatware from the 1940’s. The plates are in the highly popular, 1941 “Desert Rose” pattern by Franciscan, and the grille-sized flatware by Wm. Rogers, is in the 1940, “Treasure” pattern.
Grille-sized flatware was designed with longer handles for the knives, dinner forks and salad forks. It enjoyed brief popularity and was also called “Vogue” or “Viande” flatware. Designers felt that the longer handles made the flatware easier to use.
The “water glass”, or “water goblet”, is properly placed above the dinner knife. Water specific glasses weren’t made for the dining table until 1851, when the Corning Glass company catalog first offered a “water glass” in their glassware line.

The customs attached to the serving of water are widely different from those of other drinks. Water is the only drink which, whether at the dining-room table or in the living room, can always be poured before it is served. As we have said in the chapter “Setting the Table,” under the most elaborate system of service, water is not poured until the guests are seated at the dining-room table. But, as a matter of widely accepted practice, the water glasses are usually filled before the guests come into the room, and refilled from a pitcher as soon as any considerable quantity has been drunk.

Water served in the living room is brought in filled tumblers on a small tray; stemmed water goblets belong only on the dining-room table. It is perfectly cor rect, of course, to leave a pitcher of water in the living room or hall, on a tray with empty glasses, but whenever a guest asks for water, except in the dining room, it may always be brought already poured in a tumbler on a small tray.— From “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette,” 1948

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