Chateau Furking Expensive H₂0

"Extract from Extreme cuisine article. Melbourne's Vue de Monde takes fine dining to the limits, with customers surrendering control to a Chef Who Knows Best. Shelley Gare reports."

"It can take a year to get a reservation at El Bulli, far longer than at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde, where the waiting list for Friday and Saturday nights can be three to four months. But the Little Collins Street restaurant has a similar devotion to detail and surprise. It serves a water, for example, that has been harvested from the cleanest clouds on the planet. It’s called Cape Grim Water, it comes from air blown up from the Antarctic over empty, icy ocean, and it’s offered to diners who are drinking particularly fine wines and want an absolutely neutral palate. The clouds form when the cold air meets the warm air over the north-west cape of Tasmania. There are just zero to 500 particles per cubic centimetre in the air, say the water’s bottlers, compared with 5000 to 10,000 particles in Sydney’s and 10 times that in China’s.

Once collected, the water goes straight into tanks and is never allowed to come into contact again with the pedestrian air you and I breathe. It makes me think of larks’ tongues and peeled grapes, but when I finally taste this bottled rainwater it is like drinking dew from a meadow. Indeed, given the ingenuity and expense that goes into gathering it, I start thinking this water is pretty reasonable at $11.50 a 750ml bottle ($7.50 recommended retail). That is exactly the effect luxury is supposed to have upon us."