ABSTRACT
Beverages are essentially based on water. As already mentioned, water has very useful qualities, one of them being as a solvent for a multitude of tastants and odorants. So before going into the unique aspects of tea, coffee, beer, and especially wine from a gastronomic point of view, let us discuss the base of it all: the qualities of water. We need not elaborate about its importance. More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, and water is crucial for all known forms of life. That includes, of course, the human race. Safe drinking water is a primary concern for the existence of civilizations, and there is a strong correlation between safe water and the standard of living as expressed in the gross domestic product (GDP). The essence of water is also illustrated by its use for setting generally used standards such as temperature and weight. The Celsius scale is based upon the properties of water; and when Napoleon introduced the metric system in 1795, the gram was defined to be equal to “the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube of one hundredth of a meter, and to the temperature of the melting ice.”1
