This fall, we’re exploring Christy Spackman’s “The Taste of Water,” a book that uncovers the hidden world of water’s flavor and its profound cultural impact. Join us for a behind-the-scenes chat with Christy.
Transcript (Automated)
Robert:
Okay, just stop for a second and think about that best tasting water that you’ve ever had in your entire life. Where was it? Okay, when you’ve got that in your head, let’s see if you’re one of these people first, you could have been the exotic person.
Speaker 2:
I once tried glacier melt water in Patagonia during a trekking expedition. It was so clean and light, almost unreal. The taste was barely there yet. It was the most satisfying drink I’ve ever had.
Robert:
Or maybe you’re just not that exotic type person, right? You’re just, you’re just that home person, right? Water just stirs something in your brain that makes you think about home.
Speaker 3:
There’s just nothing like the water for my grandma’s. Well, you know, it’s always cold, like brain freeze cold. But in the best way, every time I drink it, I swear I’m instantly back to being a kid again.
Robert:
And how can I forget the plastic water bottle? Folks?
Speaker 4:
I’m telling you, this bottled water I get is so good. It’s ruined all other water for me. Like, I took a sip and suddenly realized I’ve been settling for mediocre hydration my whole life, and it doesn’t have that weird taste.
Robert:
Come on. Did any of those folks resonate with you? Maybe not, but you’ve been around folks just like that. Let’s go ahead and jump into this episode. Welcome to the outfall, where we share the unique backstories of our water world and infrastructure. I’m Robert, and today we’re exploring the taste of water and its connection to the environment. Our guide is Christy Pacman, author of The Taste of Water, a book that opened my eyes to an aspect of water I really never truly considered. In our annual fall book series, we’ve explored the Seas with Cynthia Barnett. We’ve journeyed through the pipes with Chelsea Wall. Now we’re gonna go on a sensory adventure revealing how water’s flavor has been engineered over a century this fall. You can join us at Clemson University to hear Christie herself, courtesy of Dr. Ladner environmental engineering lecture series, but first to wet your appetite. I know that was bad. We recently spoke with Christie to get a preview of her book. I always like asking this question, but what was the genesis of the, of this book? Because I can imagine writing a book, you know, you’ve gotta have a certain amount of passion to, to be able to finish it. Maybe take us to the beginning. Sure.
Christy:
Uh, so I, I think it helps you mention I was a study abroad student in France, and we did, uh, essentially a guided wine tasting. It was my first a adventure in, in thinking about how people use taste and smell as these very specific markers of your capacity to navigate culturally, to demonstrate like, Hey, I am, I’m in the no. And, uh, so they taught us to hold the glass up and swirl it, and that as the wine drips down the side of the glass, you could evaluate sugar content, kind of like, does it have a lot of sugar, a lot of alcohol, or is it pretty mild? Um, and, and then I participated up through the sniffing point, and then, uh, one of my colleagues had fun treating me. I would joke, kind of like a monkey in a circus because I would then perform my capacity to smell things and describe them.
Christy:
And that then got repeated a few years later when I was a teaching assistant on another study abroad in France where we went, um, to the Conte region and did a cheese tasting. And along with some food science colleagues there, and an anthropologist named Kristi Shields Argel, uh, learned all about the work of describing the tastes and smells and cheese and how that helps cheese producers in the conte region kind of push back against the craft foods approach to cheese to say it’s okay that we’re only gonna make a limited amount of this cheese and it’s going to be valuable and making it this way is going to allow us to maintain the lifestyle that we value, which is having our cows out in the pasture. Um, rather than having really mass, you know, a mass industrial production. And I, I don’t want to say that mass industrial food is not valuable.
Christy:
It has its own special place in the food system, but so do these craft artisanal foods. And for me, thinking about the tastes and smells and water emerge from those two moments of seeing the techniques, um, at least in the case of the wine tasting and the tools in the case of the cheese tasting, ’cause they had this, they developed a kind of shared language around how to describe cheese. And I love this imagination of like farmer A and farmer B sitting around a table and farmer A is like this totally smells like the hay and the corner of my barn and farmer B b’s like, I dunno, your barn. And so farmer A brings in some hay the next time and plops it on the table like this. And, and that development of shared language is just such a powerful tool. And so I started wondering, Hey, what’s going on in the water world? Is there something similar? And it turns out there was and that opened up a bunch of doors from there.
Robert:
Was there a surprise moment or a surprise revelation for you as you started to write your book?
Christy:
This is such a great question, Robert. The, the surprise actually is when I started working on it, it was all about bottled waters. And I have this statement in one of my early research proposals. It’s like, I don’t need to look at municipal water. They’re completely different systems. And that was baloney because it turns out like the systems that have taught us to value certain tastes and smells and water are the systems that have allowed bottled water to become so prevalent across the United States as like, this is the ideal taste of what a water should be. I, I think that’s worth us asking questions about why do we actually accept the claim that the taste of a bottled water is what the ideal taste of a water should potentially be? And I’ve even heard that from, you know, folks here in the Phoenix region who are, who work in water, um, who are in charge of local municipalities saying, yeah, the ideal taste of water is bottled water right now. And I’m like, whoa, we don’t want it to be that, do we? So that’s the big surprise for me.
Robert:
I really enjoyed, um, the story about beer production using Reclaim Water and the fact that the breweries really liked using Reclaim Water because they sort of had a, this blank canvas. I I had never thought of it quite like that. Did I get that right? You
Christy:
Got that? Yep. So that was in collaboration with a colleague, Marissa Manheim, she’s now at Buffalo, uh, was at the time a grad student here at a SU and we were starting this research project together, and she drinks beer and I don’t, and so, but I’d been paying attention to reclaimed water. And she’s like, there’s this thing going on. Let’s, let’s talk to brewers. And as we started talking to brewers, we realized this is the perfect material for them because many of them are already trying to produce that quality of water in-house. They have installed reverse osmosis systems and, um, but there are some super micro breweries that don’t have the money to do that. And so being given access to water of this quality really opens up a new door for them. And in fact, there’s a brewery down in, uh, lemme make sure I get my cities right.
Christy:
I’m gonna say Gilbert, Arizona, but it might be Chandler, but I’m pretty sure it’s Gilbert, um, called Desert Monks Brewery, who originally, um, started brewing. Like they participated in one of the beer brewing challenges that happened in 20 18, 20 19, um, but are now actually buying reclaimed water from Scottsdale water on a regular basis to make their brews just because of the quality of the water that they get. That way they’re like, we don’t have the capacity right now fiscally to install an in-house water purification system, and Scottsdale’s doing it, and they’re sending us great water . And like, so it’s, it’s just provided a really neat opportunity for them as a brewery to up the quality, or maybe not quality is the right word I want, but the consistency of their beer because the water that comes in, and, you know, we know this intrinsically, but we kind of forget. So for example, a few days ago, I just turned to my husband and said, wow, our water’s really salty again. And, and so there’s this seasonality to the flavors that happen in water. And some of that’s, as our municipal water providers switch sources, if we’re paying attention, we can actually go, wait, there’s a new source that’s coming through my tap. Even though if I wasn’t paying attention, I wouldn’t notice.
Robert:
So what were some of the interesting comments from friends, family, others that read your book? What were some of the comments that you heard
Christy:
Pretty consistently? People say, wow, I’d never thought about my water this way, which I, I mean, as an author, that’s the most exciting thing for someone to say. The other thing that I love people saying to me is, even though this is an academic book, I was able to read it . So I tried really hard, um, to write in a way that it would be a book that I would want to read, uh, while also meeting the requirements, of course, for a tenure application in the social sciences, which is a book published with the University press. So that’s a fine line to walk.
Robert:
I think Christie’s done a really good job here. Her work highlights an intriguing paradox for me in our noble pursuit of safe, reliable drinking water by eliminating certain tastes and smells, we’ve turned water into a highly processed product, far removed from its origins. I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe the implications there. If this discussion has piqued your interest, I’ve got some good news. David, Amy and I are hosting Christie this fall, and we’d love for you to join us. It’ll be a great opportunity to dive deeper into these ideas and perhaps scan a new perspective. If you’re keen to attend, just reach out to us and we’ll make sure you get all the details. So as we wrap up here, I’d like you just to leave you with a small challenge. Next time you’re, you’re having that glass of water, take a moment, slow down, really savor it, and consider its journey from the source to your glass. You might be surprised by what you notice. Stay hydrated, stay curious. We’ll catch you next time. Thanks for listening.
