Salt Lake City's tap water judged 'tastiest'

Thirsty? Well, you're in the right place.

Salt Lake City has the nation's tastiest tap water, according to a panel of professional wine-tasters commissioned by NBC's "Today" show to test water from 12 cities.

Salt Lake's tap water is "viscous, thick and rich" — apparently a good thing — according to wine-tasting expert David Lynch. Another tester, Joe Bastianich, called Salt Lake water "nonflawed, clean and delicious."

A close second went to Boston, with Bastianich noting its "purity — straight down the middle." Columbia, S.C., came in third: "Luscious — I like its guts," Lynch said.

The results give a new boost to Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson's request that city employees and residents — and anyone else who will listen — stop buying bottled water and start drinking from the faucet.

"It certainly supports our position that you're a lot better off economically and in terms of the impact on the environment by filling your water bottle from your faucet," the mayor said. "It is insane that people buy water in plastic bottles in our grocery stores."

Anderson has decried single-use bottled water as an unforgivably wasteful way to wet your whistle, hitting the environment and the wallet equally hard.

"It's not only about the failure to recycle the plastic bottles, but equally or more important is the incredible emissions in transporting water, sometimes overseas, and then the million and a half barrels of oil used to manufacture the bottles every year in this country alone," he said.

Anderson sent a memo in November to his staff asking that department heads stop handing out bottled water at meetings. While the ubiquitous bottles are still common at City Council, Planning Commission and other meetings, Anderson said his edict has had an effect in the city and elsewhere in the community.

"I think it's one of those sort of light-goes-on moments that people hear about it, and they say to themselves, 'This doesn't make any sense at all. What are we doing?'" he said. "It's how we get marketed into all sorts of bad ideas."

The television show's taste test, which the network billed as unscientific, had wine-tasters sample water shipped from each city in two identical, clean plastic bottles. The bottles were stored in New York at 60 degrees until the judges tested the water in clean glassware. The judges were offered cubes of French bread as palate-cleansers and spittoons so they could taste without swallowing.

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