Sweet Carribie: Carribie Mineral Water with Damien Smith

Water is rarely spoken of in terms of vintage or terroir, unless a source is distinctive enough to demand the vocabulary usually reserved for wine. This episode of Sensing Up turns that vocabulary toward a spring on the Yorke Peninsula, where a family has spent nearly two decades learning to taste, describe and finally bottle what lies beneath their land.

Damien Smith is the founder and custodian of Carribie Mineral Water, drawn from a single aquifer on his family's remote property on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula. Carribie takes its name from the local word for where the emu drinks, honouring the flora and fauna of the land it comes from. Damien's background is in wine, including a career that began with Moët Hennessy Australia in the early 2000s, and it is that palate, trained on champagne and fine wine, that first recognised the property's water as something worth taking seriously. Together with his wife Gretchen, who is training to become Australia's first female water sommelier, he is building what they describe as the world's first terroir mineral water estate for gastronomy and wellness.

Tasted from a wine glass rather than a tumbler, Carribie's structure becomes obvious: an initial sweetness from natural sodium chloride carried in on sea spray, a savoury, almost umami mid-palate, and a lingering, faintly glycerous finish that coats rather than simply passes over the tongue. Valérie and Damien tasted both the still and sparkling expressions side by side, drawing direct comparisons to the front, mid and back palate structure more usually discussed in fine wine and champagne, and arriving, glass in hand, at the same conclusion: a source this distinctive earns the language of terroir.

Carribie Mineral Water is the Yorke Peninsula estate producing Australia's first terroir-driven mineral water, drawn from a single ancient aquifer near the family's coastal property. Water featured in this episode:

• Carribie Mineral Water Still: https://carribie.com/products/carribie-mineral-water-still
• Carribie Mineral Water Sparkling: https://carribie.com/products/carribie-mineral-water-sparkling

Valérie Henbest is a French-Australian cheese specialist born in Normandie. Imports 10+ tonnes of French cheese monthly, sells at Smelly Cheese Shop, Adelaide Central Market. French National Order of Agricultural Merit 2023. Inducted into Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, Paris.

Sensing Up is a space to slow down, pay attention and let the senses lead.
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