1. What is the differences between the different types of bottled waters in Australia?

There are three main types of water sold in bottles in Australia. Typicaly mineral water has 1,000 parts per million of minerals. In contract purified tap water has 30 to 40 parts per million.

Mineral water comes from deep underground acquifiers and is usually carbonated.

Water seeps deep into the earth through various layers of impervious rock dissolving minerals along the way. It collect in an acquifier which comprises of voids, impervious and pervious rocks. 

There is no air in these deep acquifiers and in Daylesford they are fed with carbon dioxide which filters up from the volcanic rocks beneath, which carbonates the water.

This water, which is under pressure, is forced up through fissures in the rock collecting more trace elements until it breaks ground in a mineral spring.

Typically mineral waters contain large amounts of minerals because of this process – over 1,000 parts per million and it is this that gives them their strong flavour and health giving properties.

It can take many hundreds or thousands of years for this process to occur depending on the local geology. In the Daylesford the process is a much shorter cycle and the taste of the water changes seasonally from times of high and low rainfall.

Spring water This water also comes from underground but it the run-off from groundwater from  the water table. It is not stored in underground acquifers and is far more subject to the vaguaries of the prevailing rainfall. Because its journey through the earth is much shorter and quicker it therefore dissolves fewer minerals and is usually flat – without carbonation.

Rain water. This is simply what it says collected from the clouds and is low in minerals.

Purified water This could be water from anywhere including the tap, which has been trated to remove impurities including minerals and bacteria.

2. Is bottled water filtered or processed?

Yes. Daylesford and Hepburn Springs Mineral Water Co. (DHMSCO) uses old-fashioned micropore fabric filters. This removes any solid contaminants but leaves in the essential minerals that give the water its flavour, the terroir of the Daylesford and Hepburn Springs area.

In the early days DHMSCO experimented with active carbon filters but they stripped minerals out of the water and left it with the generic taste of tap water.

In the bottling process our water loses some of its carbon dioxide content – its fizz – and we return it to the same level that it comes from the ground with for the bottle.

3. We have great tap water in Australia. Why drink mineral water?

It’s your choice. People drink beer and wine. Some people may not want to drink alcohol because they are driving, may have a medical condition or may be pregnant or simply because they don’t want to.

Our mineral water offers a choice with a flavour reflecting the terroir of the region and without added sugar or colourings (although our flavoured waters do contain some of these ingredients).

Not everybody is on the water grid in Australia and even for those that are the quality of tap water varies depending on the age and state of repair of it’s pipes. For example, in Melbourne parts of St Kilda and Prahran have water that is musty in taste, although this can be removed with carbon filters.

3. Isn’t transporting mineral water environmentally unfriendly?

Arguably, transporting anything is. But transporting mineral water from Daylesford is a lot more friendly than from France or Italy where over 80kg of carbon dioxide emissions may be produced in transporting the product the 16,000km or so to Australia.

The trip direct from Daylesford to Melbourne is less than 100km, to the rest of Australia within a few thousand kilometres.
We also try and source as much as possible within 100km of the spring and from small businesses. Bottles are made in Spotswood Recycled cardboard boxes and screw caps are made in Oakley. The labels are printed in Croydon.

4. How much water does it take to produce 1 litre of mineral water?

It is difficult to calculate these figures precisely but it is very small. There is roughly a 0.5% per cent spillage on top of the volume we produce. Waste water is used to irrigate local vegetable gardens.

Wine can use up to 270 litres of water per bottle, according to the Department Natural Resource Science at the University of Adelaide. Beer uses nearer to 100 litres of water per bottle.

1kg of beef uses about 50,000 litres of water.  A kilo of rice uses 2,500 litres, wheat about 700 litres.

5. Why hasn’t water been produced in Daylesford/Hepburn Springs since the 1980s?

Swiss Italians who came to Daylesford in the 1850s and 60s as merchants first realised the value of the mineral springs but it stopped in the 1980s. Mining in the area caused the springs to fail. The locals formed a collective and campaigned against mines after which mining was made illegal.The waters returned and the locals started bottling mineral water for commercial sale to Melbourne the late 1860s.

The Hepburn Mineral Springs Company was formed by 1910 and became Hepburn Spa Pty Ltd.

It was bottling until the 1980s when Cadbury Schweppes bought the businesses and closed it down after changes in state legislation.