Cool Hunting

Nordaq Fresh is a new Swedish water filtration system that may change the way restaurants think about drinking water. We hit Napa this weekend and one of the many pleasures was an afternoon at The French Laundry (thanks for the hook up, José).

When our waiter explained our water options—locally filtered flat or sparking, on the house) we were pleasantly surprised. He went on to explain the benefits of purifying water on site at the restaurant—no need to ship, move and store heavy bottles, and more importantly the environmental impact. The restaurant recently installed a Nordaq Fresh water filtration system (one of the first in the States).

The system provides cold, freshly circulated flat or sparkling water on tap. The novelty of the system is its ability to filter out all of the things you don't want (discoloration, funky tastes, VOCs, PAH, particles and bacteria) while retaining all of the things you do want (salts and minerals). In other words, it provides the benefits of many mineral waters without the expense and hassle of shipping them half way around the world, with the additional benefit of always being fresh.

The system was created and is manufactured in Sweden, and was founded in 2003 by the owners of Acquapal. The Nordaq Fresh site is currently only in Swedish (thanks Mira for translating!) but you can request more information by clicking on the "Kontakta oss" link on the home page.