If you've got a thirst for splashing out big bucks on your drinking water, consider a trip to Northern Ireland – or just head north, to the Canadian Arctic.
A luxury hotel in Belfast is charging $53 a bottle for the "purest water on Earth," supposedly taken from the wall of a glacier in the Canadian Arctic. A 750-millilitre bottle of the Canadian vintage is the priciest item on the Merchant Hotel's Water Menu, a new offering meant to cater to discerning connoisseurs d'eau.
The Merchant Hotel unveiled its Water Menu at an event on Thursday, where water butlers (yes, that's a thing) poured out samples for a select group of taste-testers.
The Water Menu offers 13 different bottled waters, which range in price from 4.95-26.45 pounds ($10.05-$53.70 in Canadian dollars, at Friday afternoon's exchange rate). All 13 varieties are products of Aqua Amore, an artisanal water and soft drink supplier that offers H2O sourced from many different parts of the world.
The hotel also offers a "free" option – one it touted in a cheeky Facebook post on Friday. "If you don't want to splash out we can still offer a glass of 'Belfast water,' free of charge!" the post said.
Bottled water companies regularly boast about the purity of their water. Some claim their product is sourced from an underground spring, while others say they get it straight from a glacier.
But no matter the source, all bottled water must go through a rigorous cleaning process before it can be bottled and sold.
Glacier water is hardly exempt from that process. In fact, naturally-occurring glacier water can be far dirtier than your tap water at home. A glacier is made up of hard-packed ice containing millennia-old bits of gravel, silt, sand and topsoil, all accumulated during past ice ages. And when a glacier melts, that ancient dirt is left clinging to patches of filthy snow on the glacier's walls.
The photo below shows the edge of a glacier in Iceland, another popular source for "pure" glacier water.
The Merchant Hotel caters to wealthy clients, and it prides itself on offering some of the most expensive menu items in the world. Last year, the hotel made headlines with a cocktail that cost more than $1,000.
The cheapest rate at the hotel is 200 pounds ($406) for a Monday night stay.
