Aquafina Purified Drinking Water

We lived in the house for nine years before I found out about the view from the roof. Each room in the house had a view. The kitchen, my room, and my parents’ bedroom had views of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge. In Berkeley, people called that a two-bridge view. To qualify as a three-bridge view, your house had to have views of the Bay, Golden Gate, and Richmond-San Rafael Bridges. The stand of redwood trees to the northwest of our house kept us from having a three-bridge view.

The day I discovered the view from the roof was one of those brilliant Bay Area days you get in late April or early May after a rain storm. The air was so clear, you could see the peaks of the Farallon Islands, thirty miles west of the Golden Gate. As the crow flies, our house was ten miles east of the Golden Gate, so that was at least forty miles of visibility.

To get onto the roof, you had to climb the wooden fence that ran along the side of our carport, tip-toe across the parapet above my father’s darkroom, stand on the milk crate outside the window to my parents’ bedroom, jump, grab the rain gutter, and do a pull-up until your hands and hips were parallel to the roof. I was nine, and had just learned how to do a pull up. The roof was flat, so as soon as I felt the rain gutter against my stomach, I leaned forward, let go of the gutter, and rolled onto my side. The roof smelled of tar. Gravel bit into my arms and elbows. I hadn’t expected the gravel to hurt as much as it did, but the pain was worth it. The moment I got to my feet and saw Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda Island, San Leandro, Redwood City, San Mateo, the Bay Bridge, the city, Alcatraz, the Farallons, Angel Island, Sausalito, Belvedere, and the long, graceful line of Mount Tamalpais, I knew I was lucky. This was not the kind of luck I would relish later, either as a teenager or college student. This was the best of luck, dumb luck, and the luck of the Irish all rolled into one panoramic vision.

Halfway between the tip of the Berkeley pier and Treasure Island, a topaz blue freighter was heading north through San Francisco Bay. As I watched, the freighter turned west, toward Alcatraz, then it turned north, circled along the south shore of Angel Island, and headed east, towards the Berkeley pier. Before it got to the tip of the pier, it turned south, but as it approached the Bay Bridge the freighter came about, headed north, and arrived back at part of the bay where I had first noticed it.

I climbed down from the roof and went into my father’s office. The darkroom door was closed, which meant he was in there, printing. “France?” he said, from inside the darkroom. My mother’s name was Frances. He called her France.

“No, it’s me,” I said. “Hang on,” he said. I heard the sound of running water, then silence. The door opened. My father had on the thick rubber apron he wore in the darkroom. “What did you do to your arms?” he said. He was annoyed. I had interrupted him.

“There’s a ship on the bay,” I said. “I think there’s something wrong with it.”

After he checked the bruises on my arms, my father took off his apron and got his binoculars. I followed him through the house and out onto the kitchen porch. You could see only half as much of the bay from the porch as you could see from the roof, but the topaz blue freighter was still there, following the same clockwise course from the waters east of Treasure Island to Alcatraz, from Alcatraz to Angel Island, and from Angel Island south towards the Bay Bridge.

The freighter started another loop. I looked back and forth between the bay and the binoculars in my father’s hands. During the war, he had been a lieutenant in the Navy, on the Ticonderoga. In his hands, the binoculars were perfectly still.

“Should we call the Coast Guard?” I said.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” he said. He continued to watch the freighter. “She’s just resetting her compass.”

Which brings us to Aquafina, the purified drinking water.

Unlike Evian, Fiji, Vittel, or Volvic, Aquafina does not come from an exotic locale like the French Alps or South Seas. According to Pepsi, which owns and distributes it, Aquafina comes from “a public source”—corporate-speak for tap water. Pepsi says their purification process includes reverse osmosis, ultraviolet sterilization, and ozone sterilization. When I decided to write a column about a bottled water, I assumed Vittel or Volvic would be the featured bottle. They were, after all, French waters with stylish labels. But after tasting twenty brands, foreign and domestic, Aquafina—despite its garish label and Pepsi-esque shoulder—emerged as the best-tasting water.

When your computer crashes, you restart it. In therapy, a common goal is to relive parts of your childhood. In cuisine, when the flavors get crowded, a good chef goes back to fresh ingredients. When a painter’s eye gets lost, he or she looks at classic art, or at so-called “primitive art.” All of this used to be called “starting over.” These days, it’s “a reset.”

What if you could reset your taste just by drinking water? Ice heals a burn. Can water restore a jaded palate? Instead of challenging you with complexity, water is consistent, neutral, and simple. If you want your wine to taste better, a bottle of water might be the answer.

One Bottle is dedicated to the appreciation of good wines and good times, one bottle at a time. You can write to Joshua Baer at jb@onebottle.com.