Find your water in seven swipes

Seven questions about taste and feel, matched against more than 600 bottled waters that publish a mineral analysis. No account, no email, about a minute. It ends with one named water and the lab sheet behind it.

What the seven questions measure

Each swipe sets one axis of the chemistry, so a preference turns into a filter rather than a mood. The cards ask about taste. This is what moves underneath.

1. Carbonation

   Asked as “First question, as always. Still or sparkling?”

   Carbonation is dissolved CO₂, and still versus sparkling is the fork you notice first. Natural means the gas rises with the water from volcanic or deep geologic ground; added means it is injected at bottling. The difference is provenance, terroir if you like, since the gas tastes much the same either way. CO₂ also turns the water slightly acidic, which is where the tang comes from.

2. Total dissolved solids

   Asked as “How much should you taste it?”

   TDS, total dissolved solids, is every mineral in the water summed in mg/L. The loudness knob. Under 50 a water is barely there; over 1,500 it is intensely mineral. It tells you how much, not which.

3. Calcium or sodium

   Asked as “How should it feel going down?”

   The dominant positive ion. Calcium and magnesium, the hardness minerals from limestone, read crisp and clean; sodium, from volcanic and thermal sources, reads soft, round and velvety. Decided by which ion wins on charge, not weight.

4. Bicarbonate or sulfate

   Asked as “The finish.”

   The dominant negative ion. Bicarbonate rounds and soothes the stomach; it is what the classic digestive dinner waters are built on. Sulfate, from gypsum, reads dry and faintly bitter, and in quantity it is mildly laxative. Most spring waters are bicarbonate; sulfate is the rarer, drier shelf (Contrex, San Pellegrino).

5. Magnesium

   Asked as “A bitter edge?”

   Magnesium is the classic spa and recovery mineral, and in the glass it adds a bracing, slightly bitter tonic edge. You only start to taste it around 100 mg/L, and that is a sensitive palate. Our line sits there; Gerolsteiner (104) and Hépar (119) clear it, Donat (1,040) is the extreme. The EU lets any label above 50 mg/L say it contains magnesium. That is a claim, not a flavor.

6. Silica

   Asked as “What’s it for?”

   Silica dissolves out of volcanic rock and is marketed as the beauty mineral for skin, hair and nails; it is the heart of the Fiji and Volvic pitch. Fiji (96) and Ferrarelle (83) are silica-rich. A standard TDS meter cannot even see it, and it has little proven effect on taste, so it hides in plain sight.

7. Sodium

   Asked as “Watching your salt?”

   Sodium is the salt in your water. Most waters carry very little, though thermal and soda springs can run 200–1,200 mg/L. If you watch your salt, the line to remember is 20 mg/L; below it, EU law allows the label “suitable for a low-sodium diet”. Sodium is near-tasteless low down and turns savory high up. The low-salt answer steers you under the 20 mg/L line; the other leaves every water in play.

Questions people ask

How does the WaterVibe water quiz work?

Seven questions, each one mapped to a single axis of water chemistry. Your answers place you in one of sixteen types, and every bottled water in the catalog with a published mineral analysis is searched for the closest fit. It takes about a minute.

What do the seven questions measure?

Carbonation, total dissolved solids, whether the minerals lean calcium or sodium, whether they lean bicarbonate or sulfate, magnesium, silica, and sodium. The cards are phrased as taste and feel because that is how people actually choose a water.

Do I need an account to take the quiz?

No. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to install, no email. Your result is kept in your own browser, so the page still knows it when you come back.

Where do the mineral figures come from?

Producer labels, accredited laboratory analyses and official registers, each one linked on the water’s own page. Figures that were never published are marked as not published rather than estimated.

What happens if no water matches exactly?

You still get a result, and the page tells you which of your answers it could not honor. An honest near miss is worth more than a confident wrong answer.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure traces to a producer label, an accredited laboratory analysis or an official register, and the source sits on each water’s own page. The methodology sets out the source tiers and how corrections are handled. If you would rather browse than swipe, the league tables rank every water by sodium, magnesium, silica and TDS, the collections group them the way people actually shop, and the sixteen types are the map the quiz places you on.