Five-star hotel introduces curated water menu, with bottles priced up to $41 each

I don't know a lot about wine, but I know there's a difference between what gas stations sell among the cans of Red Bull and the bait cooler, and the bottles that are listed in stylized fonts in leather-bound restaurant menus. But what about water? Can you really differentiate between a blue-labeled bottle of Deer Park and the kind that has been harvested from the interior of icebergs? Yes, apparently you can, and the five-star Merchant Hotel in Belfast has just introduced a new curated water menu, which features 13 different bottled waters that range in price from £4.95 for still water from Somerset, England to £26.45 for iceberg water sourced from the Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf.

The Merchant Hotel is no stranger to extravagance; it once offered the world's most expensive cocktail, a £750 Mai Tai made with the ultra-rare Wray and Nephew Rum. It's still the kind of place where guests can arrange for transportation in a Rolls Royce Phantom and pick up a pair of Louboutins on their way through the lobby. And, on top of that, now guests who don't trust the blend of hydrogen and oxygen molecules that come out of the tap can consult with two Water Butlers to determine what kind of water will best pair with the items on the menu. Gavin Carroll, the General Manager of the Merchant, somehow kept a straight face while he said:

The ethos behind the new water menu is to allow our guests to have the chance and choice to curate their own bespoke food and beverage experience.  Our water butlers can help customers decide on the type [of] water that will best complement the food and wine they choose, to enable them to experience the perfect taste journey.

As ridiculous as this sounds, it's not new. The first hotel to employ its own water sommelier was the Ritz-Carlton in New York's Battery Park, which had one on staff when it opened in 2002. Then 26-year-old Filip Wretman was seemingly the first to offer hotel guests a curated "water experience" from a list of still, sparkling and mineral options ("I've sometimes drunk tap water," he solemnly confessed to the New York Times).

Claridge's, the five-star London institution, prepared its own high-dollar water menu in 2007, with bottles of water that were priced up to £50 ($77) per liter. The hotel discontinued the menu shortly thereafter, citing a desire to be "more environmentally conscientious." (I hope they recycled all of those unused menus).

The hotels and their wine butlers can talk all they want about terroir and purity and country of origin, but what, exactly, does one gain from spending $40 bucks on a bottle of iceberg-sourced water? At least you'll be well-hydrated when you sign your check.