Water and distillation

[Jono]

If Jim Butler's posting info is accurate for the whiskey distillation business...it seems the source of water is a non-essential element. Therefore, the claims may harken back to earlier days of distillation w/o treatment and may today be mere marketing. I hear the old beer commercial..."From the land of skyblue waters...(Hamms)"

[cowdery]

Jono,

The thing Jim posted was just a standard of identity. If you call water X it has to be Y. That doesn't tell you anything about the water used by distilleries. All he was doing was showing that, at least as far as the federal regs are concerned, some of the terms we were wondering about are, in fact, synonymous. It's a misreading of that, of this thread, and of the facts as we know them to conclude that "the source of water is a non-essential element." Nothing could be further from the truth.