Sodas & Waters

Sodas and waters are packaged drinks built on water: still and sparkling bottled waters, named for their source or treatment, and soft drinks, most of them carbonated. They run from spring water to soda water, tonic, colas, ginger beers, lemonades and citrus sodas.

How to choose Sodas & Waters

  • Spring or artesian. Spring water has to rise to the surface on its own and be collected at the spring or from a bore hole feeding it. Artesian water comes from a well tapping a confined aquifer under natural pressure.
  • Purified. This water has been distilled, deionized or run through reverse osmosis, which strips out what the source carried.
  • Dissolved solids. Labels may list total dissolved solids in parts per million. Water from a protected underground source, tapped at a spring or bore hole, with 250 parts per million or more gets its own legal name. Its label must say low below 500 or high above 1,500.
  • Quinine. The bitter note in tonic is quinine. A carbonated drink may hold no more than 83 parts per million of it, and the label has to declare it.

About Sodas & Waters

Sodas and waters split into two families: bottled waters, which may hold nothing added beyond limited fluoride or an antimicrobial agent, and soft drinks built on carbonated water. When soda water, seltzer or tonic is an ingredient in another drink, the bottled water rules do not cover it. Bottled waters are named for where the water comes from and how it is treated, and federal standards fix what each of those names means.

Fizz is carbon dioxide dissolved in water, and at the bar it lengthens a drink. A spritz, for one, is 90 ml of prosecco and 60 ml of a bitter orange aperitif over ice, topped with a splash of soda water. Tonic adds bitterness of its own from quinine.

At a glance

Main types
Spring, artesian, sparkling, soda water, tonic, colas, lemonades
Label terms
Spring, artesian, purified, sparkling, dissolved solids
Serve with
Spritzes, highballs, citrus, plenty of ice

Sodas & Waters questions

Is seltzer the same as sparkling water?

Not on a US label. Sparkling bottled water has to keep exactly as much carbon dioxide as it carried from its source, even if treatment removes the gas and it is added back. Seltzer and soda water carry no rule about where their bubbles came from. In a glass they behave alike, so pick by taste and bubble size.

Who invented soda water?

The English chemist Joseph Priestley gets the credit. In the late 1760s he began studying what was then called fixed air, now known as carbon dioxide, and worked out a way to dissolve it in water. He hoped the fizzy water would help against scurvy at sea, which did not work out, but the drink outlived the idea.

Can sodas be flavored with sassafras today?

Yes, but only with sassafras extract that has had its safrole removed, which US rules allow as a flavoring. Sassafras oil is about 80 percent safrole, and any food or drink with added safrole or sassafras oil counts as adulterated and cannot legally be sold. The ban also reaches sassafras bark used mainly to carry those compounds into a drink, as in sassafras tea.

Sources: US Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR 165.110, 172.575, 189.180); Science History Institute; International Bartenders Association.

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