AquaBotanical – a water sourced entirely from fruit and vegetables – is currently sold as a premium brand in Australia. But the brand’s potential is much greater, according to its founder: the technology could be used to unlock drinking water from sugar cane production in water-stressed India.
In Australia, AquaBotanical comes from the water that would otherwise be wasted during the production of fruit juice concentrate.
In India, fruit and vegetables could be substituted for sugar cane – with the potential to produce 180 billion litres of botanical water annually in a country where clean, safe drinking water is a precious resource.
Water from carrots, citrus…
AquaBotanical is produced from locally grown produce supplied by farmers in Mildura, Victoria, Australia.
The patented AquaBotanical technology was developed by Dr Bruce Kambouris, whose background includes 15 years as a chemist for the beverage and wine industry and qualifications from Flinders University (South Australia), Curtin University (Western Australia) and Monash University (Melbourne).
“The inspiration to produce water from fruit and vegetables was instigated in my role as a chemical engineer working in fruit and vegetable juice concentration industry,” Kambouris told.
“There I saw the process of concentrating juice, and the removal of a botanical fraction from the juice to reduce the volume. This botanical fraction was 100% derived from this pure juice and was just discarded.”
The technology has now been tailored to work with any type of juice: including carrot, citrus, sugarcane and even olives.
But doesn’t it taste like veggies?
Kambouris admits that a ‘vegetable’ taste to the water was one of the biggest challenges he had to address in developing the technology, along with ensuring that the water could be produced in an economical way.
But it’s a challenge he overcame: and now the water is taken seriously by chefs and connoisseurs and has a premium position in hotels, shops, restaurants and even Parliament House.
It is packaged in blue glass bottles and has what the brand describes as a ‘clean, subtle, silky mouthfeel without the salty, acidic aftertaste of many mineral waters,’ complementing wine and gourmet food.
“The water is complex and exciting,” said Kambouris.
“Expert tasters seem to detect a slight taste of the source fruit or vegetable, but the lay drinker does not taste this. It is what I would describe as having a big mouthfeel to it.”
