India’s rich splash out as luxury water becomes latest status symbol

At an Indian gourmet food store, Avanti Mehta is organising a blind tasting of drinks sourced from France, Italy and India. No, this is not wine, it is water. Participants use tiny shot glasses to check the minerality, carbonation and salinity in samples of Evian from the French Alps, Perrier from southern France, San Pellegrino from Italy and India’s Aava from the foothills of the Aravalli mountains. “They will all taste different … you should be choosing a water that can give you some sort of...