San Pellegrino Carbonated Mineral Water

...mean.

This San Pellegrino carbonated water comes in an emerald green glass bottle with silver twist lid. Now I am sure this first description is rather selective in itself as the majority of the bottled waters we know are in blue or light blue plastic containers.
If you have in mind the French Perrier bottle, that is exactly the shape you should picture in your mind, a bit of a chubby bottle, but the label, or rather the labels ...
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San Pellegrino Terme (San Pellegrino Baths) is a town situated in the valley of Bergamasca, called "La Valle Brembana", it takes the name from the Brembo river which flows along this territory.
San Pellegrino Terme is by the Brembo river and is 24 Km from Bergamo and 70 Km from Milan and it was the centre of agricultural economy until the end of the 800, San Pellegrino Terme has now become thanks to ... more

Hi everybody!

Like a true Italian I enjoy I waving my proud flag up in the air (yes, I admit it, I also did it when Italy won the world cup! :-) so this time I would like to introduce you to another one of the proud products of our land, which I am sure you have seen on your major supermarket shelves or possibly in one of the delis close to where you live.

Unfortunately in this specific case I have to kindly ask you to use a bit of your imagination as unfortunately Ciao did not download a picture of this precious bottle of water, hopefully though a little description might "spring" it into your mind so you can possibly understand which one I mean.

This San Pellegrino carbonated water comes in an emerald green glass bottle with silver twist lid. Now I am sure this first description is rather selective in itself as the majority of the bottled waters we know are in blue or light blue plastic containers.
If you have in mind the French Perrier bottle, that is exactly the shape you should picture in your mind, a bit of a chubby bottle, but the label, or rather the labels on this product look very different indeed.

The main label is at the bottom and it is light blue in colour with a white border, it says S.PELLEGRINO at the top in dark blue then right underneath you have a bright red stars (which is their logo) and a detailed list of all the contents/ residues of this water.

Right on top of the main label you have a secondary one which is oval in shape, positioned around the middle height of the bottle, which bears a picture of the Baths where this water originates with date 1899 showing.

The label along the neck of the bottle just bears S. Pellegrino written all over it (just in case you missed the main label!).

The silver twisty cap is silver in colour and has a bright red star on top, their logo as mentioned earlier on.

The style of the printing and the way the labels are, has been the same since I was a little girl and doing an online research I also have found a labeld which dates back to 1954 which looks almost the same as today's one.
You may appreciate though that things do change with time so the contents/residues list changed according to the results of the strict chimical tests they go through every couple of years.

JUST A BIT OF HISTORY
(Giusto un pochino di storia)
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San Pellegrino Terme (San Pellegrino Baths) is a town situated in the valley of Bergamasca, called "La Valle Brembana", it takes the name from the Brembo river which flows along this territory.
San Pellegrino Terme is by the Brembo river and is 24 Km from Bergamo and 70 Km from Milan and it was the centre of agricultural economy until the end of the 800, San Pellegrino Terme has now become thanks to its waters, one of the most famous locations in the Lombardy region. The name of this town comes from a martir in Auxere in France in the third century. San Pellegrino Terme has been famous since 1200 when people discovered the properties of the waters particularly good for kidney stones.

HOW DOES IT TASTE?
(Che gusto ha?)
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Surely water is just water, why should this water be much better than others and why should we have to pay the price?
I totally agree this water is certainly more expensive than other brands on the market and not many people could be bothered to actually pay more to get something similar.. the fact is that first of all this is a mineral water which naturally contains an amount of minerals which do not harm our body but can actually be beneficial, this one for example is rich in calcium and magnesium (magnesium in fact helps our body absorb calcium which is essential for healthy bones), some cheap waters we have on the market are just ordinary filtered tap water..
What makes this very nice is the addition of natural CO2 which is carbon dioxide which gives it the nice bubbly effect.
if I remember well Coca cola tried to introduce a water a few years ago which was soon banned as the consumers where complaining that it was just ordinary overprice tap water.. no-where it said that it was either spring, mineral.. I am sure if anyone of you watched the famous Peckam water episode from "Fools and Horses" might understand what I mean!
So going back to this product, yes it is a naturally quality item and in fact in Italy some of the main brands of soft canned drinks do contain this water as base, I have in fact seen around in London the Lemonade, Orangeade (Fanta version) and also the Chinotto (sparkling bitter orange drink similar to Fanta) in some Deli shops.

Now the really important bit, the taste.. believe it or not I do find waters have different tastes and have my favourite ones.
S. Pellegrino is very light in taste and the bubbles are not overpowering at all, they feel like a slight explosion on your tongue and it goes down with a happy crackle and leaves you refreshed without any heavy or bloated feeling. When you pour it the look is clear and fizzy to the right point, if you in fact experience pouring it in a glass and leave it to settle it doesn't go
down half of its initial volume as most fizzy drinks, it almost stays the same as still water.
If you have ever tasted Perrier, well forget that.. I personally never liked it as to me it tastes earthy, S. Pellegrino insteat tastes pure.
This product does not smell of anything specific, it smells of fresh water and if your nose is too close you might feel the bubbles crackling, popping against your skin (funny!) and the sound is very pleasant when you pour it... a pleasant reassuring fizz, a lovely anticipation of the pleasure you have ahead when you finally savour this drink.

HOW DO YOU SERVE THIS?
(Come si serve?)
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Very important with all carbonated drinks be it beer, soft drinks or water itself is to drink it nicely chilled. I am sure you must have tried like me (silly woman) to drink a Coke room temperature just because you really fancied it... it is a no-no and the bubbles seem to foam even more and make you choke!
When you drink a chilled carbonated water it seems to go down very well giving you very refreshing and thirst quenching, I sometimes release a little "lady burpy" (when not surrounded by work colleagues or strangers) which is such a relief!!
This water is lightly carbonated which means that you won't feel bloated afterwards but it is actually reccommended to aid digestion.
I personally find it much easier to drink this water than others, if I have to drink still water I sometimes force myself as don't drink as much as I should but when it comes to S.Pellegrino I can drink the whole bottle within an hour!
I like drinking this water from a glass definitely not a plastic cup and during the summer you might like to add a slice of lemon just to give it an extra kick!
I would not serve this with ice cubes for the simple reason that you are spoiling this water with frozen tap water so as long as this water is nicely chilled it won't disappoint you.

SHELF LIFE
(Conservazione)
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A normal water has a shelf life of roughly two years if kept in ideal conditions that includes being away from direct sunlight, direct heat and stored at room temperature.
You may appreciate water is a live product with natural micro-organisms and minerals living in it and if exposed to certain situations might get altered and cause the growth of mould, spores, algaes at the bottom of the bottle... Normal PET plastic bottles are actually renouned for not having defensive properties in this sense, that is why precious waters have the priviledge of being stored in glass bottles with dark colour as it is not really worth it for ordinary waters... you see the container might end up being more expensive than the water itself!!
As this water is carbonated, therefore sparkling if not fullly consumed roundabout 24 hours since opening, it starts loosing its bubbles and becomes flat (and sad) and the taste is therefore not that nice anymore. If you don't think you will be able to drink the whole bottle in this amount of time then you can purchase the smaller ones, one of those fills a glass of medium size. In any case do make sure that once you have opened the bottle first time you do close it properly and twist the cap all the way through as hard as you can.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
(Quanto costa?)
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To be honest with you the only version I have seen around of the San Pellegrino water was the 750 ml bottle, but I did a small research on the Tesco online shopping and found the following options in size and prices:

6 x 250 ml @ £2.69
(6 small bottles which are easy to carry around in your handbag)

1 x 750 ml @ £0.89
(the normal size you find in most groceries stores)

6 x 1 litre @ 5.39
(1 litre bottles is obviously more convenient for household use)

MY OPINION
(La mia opinione)
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I totally agree this water is one of the most expensive we have on the market and I certainly do not buy this myself on a regular basis although I am writing this review and I personally support the purchase of this product.
They call it the champagne of waters and according to their website this water is most used during connoisseurs tastings be it wine or other drinks.
If I was to win the lottery and money would not be an issue then I would definitely make sure I would always have a bottle in the fridge. I often purchase this during the summer period when I feel like having a nice refreshing bubby drink but I do not want to drink any rubbish like soft drinks full of sugar, sweeteners, colourants. To me it does even a better job considering the heat dehydrates our body and the feeling of refreshment we get from soft drinks is actually fake as it does not contain the amount of water our body is actually longing for when we start feeling thirsty. The amounts of sugar in fizzy pops in actual fact increase the desire of drinking and can cause all sorts of problems like weight gain, dental decay... not good-not good.
They say that the fat free mass of the human body is made of 70% of water (then 15% of mamma and 15% papa) which is a huge percentage, therefore I feel both quantity and quality of water in our life is of great importance.

Apart from the price another downside of this product might be the weight. Glass is considerably more heavy than plastic and if like me you don't own a car, carrying a bottle of water together with your week's groceries can be a bit of a mission!
The good point is that glass can be recycled so if you do decide to give this water a go be good and do your bit for the environment and make sure it can be disposed of properly.

If you want more information on this water please go to www.sanpellegrino.com, the website is in English so you will have no problems in finding what you are looking for.

As you may have noticed I also included a small Italian translation underneath each title for those of you who might like having a go at speaking this language.
Good luck and thanks for reading, hope this was informative!x

 

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