Inside the world's most prestigious water-tasting competition

ARTHUR VON WIESENBERGER'S graying hair was combed behind his ears, and his yellow tie matched his gleaming gold cuff links. With a practiced, calm authority befitting his baronial name (his grandfather was an Austrian aide-de-camp), von Wiesenberger looked out at the 10 men and women seated in front of him and explained the day's mission to us.

"We're here today to determine what tastes good in water," he said.

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That's why, sitting on my padded conference chair and listening to my watermaster's instruction, I felt like a fraud. Most days water is something I barely acknowledge; it's there to be gulped, boiled, and flushed. But I needn't have worried. Even more than an industry benchmark, the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting is designed as a tourist boon, and the only prerequisite for judgeship is enthusiasm — or a byline.

"You'll be sitting over there," he said, gesturing to two linen-covered tables under stage lights at the far end of the room. "The pourers will come by and give you each water in the right numbered glass. Hold the glass up, take a look for any impurities, anything floating. Now bring the glass to your nose and take a deep breath — what do you smell? Maybe it's chlorine, or plastic. Then take a sip, and keep the water in your mouth. How does it feel on the tongue? Is it harsh or soft? Fresh or bland? As you swallow it, is it refreshing — making you thirsty for more — or does it have a lingering residue?"

Behind von Wiesenberger, on a small dance floor in front of the judges' tables, hundreds of the competing bottles were arranged in a flowing, multilevel sculpture. This year's entries included commercial and tap waters from South Korea, New Zealand, Bosnia, and Quebec, as well as domestic products ranging from Berkeley Springs' own supply to samples from rural California. The competing brand names all sounded either parodically natural — Cedar Springs, Misty Mountain, Eldorado — or shamelessly luxurious — Selini Signature Edition Ultra Premium Quality, Otakiri Reserve.

Bottled water is poised to overtake soda as America's foremost commercial drink within the next year. Americans drank 10.9 billion gallons of it in 2014, a 7.3 percent increase over 2013. While plenty of that belongs to soda-company behemoths like Aquafina and Dasani, the artisanal market is growing as well, and Berkeley Springs offers an annual chance for smaller companies to garner an otherwise unattainable level of industry recognition and respect.

TRAVEL BERKELEY SPRINGS, the local tourism bureau, decided in 1991 that they needed some kind of annual water festival in order to capitalize on the town's namesake natural fountains. What started as a whim then grew, almost inadvertently, into one of the most prestigious events of the $360 billion water industry. And that means Berkeley Springs, all 0.34 square miles of it, has become one of the industry's most important locations.

I held the first glass up to the lights, searching for any distinguishing characteristic. Alas, it looked like water. I stuck my nose in and sniffed embarrassedly. I smelled a weak hint of chlorine, and then, taking my first tiny sip, sensed it on my tongue as well. Holding the water in my mouth for a few seconds, I swallowed and looked down at my judge's sheet, dutifully assigning a number value in each of the categories: appearance, odor, flavor, mouthfeel, and aftertaste. It was nothing worse than what I'd expect from my tap at home, and I gave it an 11 out of 14 in the overall category without really understanding what that even meant.

Berkeley Springs' own water flows through surrounding hills of silica, and some say that accounts for its extraordinary taste and texture, and for the fact that it has flowed at a constant 74.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 1,000 gallons a minute, for untold centuries. Before Europeans arrived, native tribes traveled from the Great Lakes and the Carolinas to "take the waters" here, and once colonists came, Berkeley Springs grew into a well-known resort destination. The town even boasts "the world's only outdoor monument to presidential bathing" — a hole in the ground that George Washington allegedly used to wash up in 1748.

Berkeley Springs may have been the first American spa town, but it was a shadow of itself when Jeanne Mozier, a then 32-year-old ex–CIA employee, moved there in 1977. Mozier and her husband opened a historical museum and restored an art deco single-screen movie house. But the town's lap pools and stone baths went out of commission during its snowy winters, so in the early '90s, Mozier set out to establish a winter water-themed event to attract tourists.

The bottled flight was delicious, and varied: Many of the waters smelled earthy and mineralized, almost like a wet cave. But they all felt airy on my tongue, even more luxurious and flavorful than the best of the municipal samples. They tasted cold even though they weren't. The springwaters were a brand of natural miracle, so flavorful they made me despair for the lifetime of impostors I'd unknowingly endured.

Halfway through the 40 samples, I hit upon a few in a row that tasted relatively unimpressive, and I wondered if I'd simply gone numb from repetition. Then I took my next sip and had that same epiphanic experience that the best ones earlier in the flight had provided. I wasn't quite ready to adopt the full von Wiesenberger lifestyle — he had told me his children never once drank tap, and that his dog preferred Perrier — but I could understand the appeal. I'd be fine never drinking from a faucet ever again.