Raising his glass in the air, Dominique Laporte sniffs the aroma emanating from within.

Realising there are no woody undertones or fruit bases he swills the drink around before lifting the glass in the air and inspecting the cloudiness of the liquid. Noting its transparency and feeling thirsty, he turns around and finishes the whole bottle.

Don’t panic though, Dominique, who has been named France’s Best Sommelier, is only tasting water.

“When you’re a sommelier you have to know about all the liquids in the restaurants - that’s everything from wine to spirits, coffee and water,” he explains.

“You have to know everything about what you’re serving and for me I was very interested in the minerals in the water - how it tastes on your tongue or palette. Water can taste different depending on the amount of sodium, calcium or magnesium in it.”

Dominique, who is in Dubai to work with Evian on a project to educate people about water and how to taste the differences, believes people should treat water just like any other drink and be choosy.

“There can be so many differences in water. The three main components in it are the sodium that you find in wine, calcium and magnesium, which affects the bitterness. If one of these components is higher in quantity you get an unbalanced taste.”

Believe it or not, Dominique says water can even affect the taste of your food.

“People think that water is too gentle to have any impact on the food you eat but it can actually damage the taste of your food. For example, if you have bad water and you are eating salmon you will get a bad taste of the fish - it will taste like the smell in the fish market. On the other hand, if you have good water you will taste the elegance and finesse of the fish.

“Still water naturalises the palate and prepares it for next course but if you have a lot of magnesium in your water you will taste some harshness that will affect the taste of the meat or vegetables.”

Dominique, who began his career as a chef before training as a sommelier, says he’s learnt all he knows by doing lots of travelling and tasting.

He became France’s Best Sommelier by winning several competitions and believes he can distinguish different waters and says he could pick out Evian if he were blindfolded and presented with several different glasses - although we weren’t able to put him to the test on that.

“When wine is perfect in terms of balance of components it is easy to drink and it’s the same with water,” he explains.

“In France we use Evian for the babies because it contains a lot of minerals and also there’s no taste or flavours because the water is totally balanced with its components. It’s rich in terms of minerals but it’s balanced which means you don’t have any one mineral which dominates the palate.”

If we’re not sure whether the balance of minerals in the water we drink is balanced, we should alternate between which brands we buy.

Dominique explains: “If you only drink one kind of water and it’s not really balanced the amount of minerals you’re getting won’t be balanced, so keep changing it.”

And Dominique insists we should be more fussy with our water choices.

“Normally in restaurants the waiters offer you still and sparkling water but some people will ask for a certain brand because they know what they like. Customers should be free with their palates and say which is their favourite - treat water like wine. When you open a bottle, try to make an opinion about it and stick to it. Ask: ‘is this the best taste I could get’?

“People say they don’t have the knowledge about wine or they don’t have knowledge about water but they have a preference and to have a preference is the beginning of knowledge.”

Become a sommelier!

Dominique believes it’s not hard for readers to become water connoisseurs.

He says: “When people tell me there’s no difference between water I advise them to do a blind tasting. Simply line up glasses containing different water and put a blindfold on before you sample them. Whenever people do this they always say ‘wow, it’s so amazing to see the difference between the waters’. The problem with water is that very few people make comparisons, and they should.”