Something in the Water Episode 7: The Austrian Oasis: Water Wealth and Wossa

In this episode of "Something in the Water," host Elena Berg interviews Denise and Rainer Hofmeister who share insights from their family-owned natural mineral water brand, Wossa. They illustrate Austria's unique relationship with water, one of the world’s most water-wealthy nations. The conversation highlights how even in Austria, there is still a need for proactive resource management and increased water education. They discuss how Wossa’s sustainability initiatives promote both a successful business model as well as devout environmental stewardship. The episode unveils how access to clean, fresh water from springs and wells contributes not only to Austria's physical health but also to its collective well-being and happiness. 

Episode Guests: Denise and Rainer Hofmeister 

Find more information about Wossa here. 

More information about the episode and Something in the Water here.

Episode Transcript and more information on the Pine Forest Media website

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted by Elena Berg

Written and produced by Elena Berg and Clark Marchese

Audio Editing by Clark Marchese

Cover art by Sarah Glavan

Theme Music by Josef Salvat

Transcript:

[00:00:18.200] - Elena Berg

Hello, everyone, it's Elena Berg, your host of something in the water. Welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here for another episode. If you've been listening to our show for a while, you may remember from episode five when we talked about water in South Africa. Our guest Candice Jansen said early in the interview, when people tell the story of water, it's usually a sad one. Well, today we're telling a happy one. In addition to rounding out our case study arc of water sommeliers around the world, we'll be talking about how water, our proximity to it, our access to it, and our drinking of it affects our happiness. Austria is not a coastal nation. However, in addition to being where our two guests for today are from, Austria is one of the happiest countries in the world, with Finland and Denmark as the top two. Austria is not far behind at number eleven in the 2023 World Happiness Report. This report looks at six variables, GDP per capita, social support, generosity, perception of corruption, freedom to make life choices, and health. That's measured by life expectancy at birth. In fact, there are many different indices that rank relative global happiness, well being or development.

[00:01:34.220] - Elena Berg

And what is and isn't measured is quite hotly debated among researchers and policymakers. So while this is not a comprehensive list, you could say it hits a lot of the major themes of many indices. What's interesting, though, is that in this 166 page report, the word water isn't mentioned once explicitly. That is, if we look a bit deeper. Water is tied to many of these variables, health and life expectancy being the obvious ones. But if access to water is strained and children, often girls, forego their studies to travel great distances to fetch water, you can see how this might have an impact on women's economic opportunities, reproductive choices, and ultimately GDP. So there's a lot of research linking proximity and access to water with well being, both economic and psychological. Phumsith Mahasuweerachai and Siwarut Pangiai, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies in 2017 that piped water access improves well being in rural communities in Asia, specifically through time saving and convenience. Yasir Afak and Ankush Manocha used satellite imaging to identify bodies of water in Punjab and indexed happiness levels of farmers in surrounding areas. They found that happiness levels were correlated with proximity to water, and this is work that they published in the Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence in 2021.

[00:02:57.280] - Elena Berg

Finally, the World Health Organization recognizes that access to green spaces has direct psychological benefits. But an organization called Blue Health is increasingly producing research to show that proximity to water or aquatic areas of recreation has similarly powerful benefits on well being. So if it wasn't clear before, yes, we all know we need water to survive, but research is also showing that we need water to enjoy. Being able to use water to play, to relax and to experience is also very important to our health. Linking this all back to Austria. Austria is one of the most water wealthy areas in the world. Not only is the state sufficiently well resourced to supply 100% of the Austrian population with municipally supplied drinking water, but the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture, forestry regions and Water Management reports that 10% of people rely on their own domestic supply from groundwater, springs and wells. Let me say that again. 10% of the Austrian population drinks water that comes straight from the ground on their own properties. It's kind of hard to imagine, but today we're going to be talking to two guests who are bottling water from one such source. Denise and Rainer Hofmeister, a father daughter pair, represent an Austrian natural mineral water brand called Wossa.

[00:04:17.840] - Elena Berg

I first met Denise and Rainer in Athens last year at the Taste and design awards, where I was a judge and their water was entered into the competition. I was immediately drawn to how friendly and down to earth they both were, their love of the Wossa brand and their general enthusiasm about Austria's awesome freshwater sources. During our interview, I was able to talk to these two about their journey in running a small family enterprise and the abundance of water in their region. We also talked about how even there in a water paradise, more needs to be done to help people appreciate and protect this valuable resource. I hope you enjoy.

[00:05:04.880] - Elena Berg

Excellent. It started. How are you? How is everybody?

[00:05:09.520] - Denise Hofmeister

Great. Yeah.

[00:05:11.680] - Elena Berg

First I want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. I've really enjoyed getting to know you too, and your beautiful water. I guess my first question would be is if you could tell us a little bit about your brand and how you got started.

[00:05:24.180] - Rainer Hofmeister

Maybe we will do it quick in the form from the water, telling it from the view of the water.

[00:05:31.640] - Denise Hofmeister

It's also part of our storytelling, so maybe that works fine. I'm Wossa. I'm spring water from Austria, from Carincia. My name is Vosta, which means water in our local dialect. I'm from a marble spring at a height of 1110 meters. I'm hand bottled. I'm source of hydration for animals, plants, and also now humans. I'm run in an ecological environment, in a farm. The farm is about 300 years old. My taste is soft, it's round, it's fresh and young. For us in Austria, water is just there. You open the tap, you can drink it. It tastes amazing. Maybe you can tell a little bit about the story about how we got started with Wossa.

[00:06:23.260] - Rainer Hofmeister

Yeah, it was really a funny thing, because our tax advisor told us about an opportunity for an investment and selling water. And the first thinking was, it makes no sense to sell water in Austria because we have really a high quality water and we use in the moment the water from the pipe also for the toilet. And you can drink the toilet water. It's really unbelievable.

[00:06:54.880] - Elena Berg

So what then pushed you over the edge to feel like this particular water is really worth putting into a bottle and marketing and sharing with the world?

[00:07:02.370] - Denise Hofmeister

I would say it's taste. For me, it was the taste. When they told me to bottle water, I was like, really? And then I started investigating, and I actually tried the water from that spring. I was like, okay, it really tastes different on your tongue. It's just different. We also really used to the nature, the mountains surrounding us. Like, if I open here, the window, I can see mountains all around us, nature green. And when we think about selling water, it's also bringing that sense of nature to people around the world.

[00:07:37.890] - Rainer Hofmeister

Even for me, it was the same experience. We met some tastes here in the office, some famous brands of Austria and our small brands and the God of the pipe, and you can really feel the difference. And we were very successful with the first taste ceremony, taste award in, I think, Slovenia. Slovenia. It was, yeah, we won the bronze medal. So we were sure that we are in the right way and we should follow with all our energy this opportunity. And the TDS is 13.

[00:08:10.920] - Denise Hofmeister

Yeah.

[00:08:11.770] - Elena Berg

So just to follow up on this, Rainer is referring to the finewater society's taste and design awards, which I've mentioned before. And that year they were held in bled, Slovenia. This was in 2021. That was the first time I had acted as a judge, and it was this wonderful event in this absolutely stunning location. Rainer also mentioned the TDS of 13, which is extremely low and gives the water a really soft, sometimes slippery feel. As a reminder, TDS stands for total dissolved solids, basically the weight of the minerals that are left over if you boil off the water. So distilled water has a TDS of zero, and it's measured by milligrams per liter, and it goes up from there. So tap water in most places is typically in the range of maybe 200 to 400 TDs. But some mineral waters can be either lower than that or all the way up into the thousands. So by comparison, ocean water, super salty, has a TDs of about 30,000.

[00:09:12.160] - Elena Berg

So the farm itself belongs to your friend, who has rights to the spring, is that correct?

[00:09:17.680] - Elena Berg

Okay.

[00:09:18.130] - Elena Berg

Has this been in his family for a long time?

[00:09:20.880] - Denise Hofmeister

300 years.

[00:09:22.100] - Elena Berg

Got it. Okay. Now I'm trying to connect all the dots.

[00:09:24.890] - Denise Hofmeister

All right.

[00:09:25.300] - Elena Berg

So it's like family, friends coming together and deciding that this is a project worth pursuing.

[00:09:30.680] - Denise Hofmeister

Exactly.

[00:09:31.370] - Elena Berg

Okay, I get it. That's really exciting.

[00:09:33.770] - Denise Hofmeister

So it's like family for us.

[00:09:35.990] - Rainer Hofmeister

And also, the owner, the string, is a friend, so we have a really good relationship. It's a really old farmer, and it's unbelievable. Beautiful. Cannot imagine. You have to see it.

[00:09:47.630] - Elena Berg

Oh, I would love to see it one day. I wanted to ask you also, because this episode is part of an arc where we're trying to talk to small water farmers around the world, not only to show that they are real people doing this on smaller scales, in contrast to some of the larger corporations that everyone thinks about, but also to explore the theme of sustainability in context. We talked a bit about the Austrian context of water abundance, but I'm wondering if there have been any challenges for you or if there are strategies you've adopted that make sense in your world to be stewards of the environment throughout this process.

[00:10:23.880] - Denise Hofmeister

For me, it's the challenges. I mean, our team is eight people, and none of us comes from the beverage industry. We have a lawyer. We have people from the automotive industry. We have a truck driver. Me myself, I'm from the marketing. So obviously, because we are not from the beverage industry, we needed to learn a lot, to research a lot and study a lot in the first way. When we started with Wossa, we had to decide on the packaging. For us, it was important that we use glass bottles because of sustainability. And also, we think if you drink from a glass bottle, it tastes better than from a plastic bottle. It's a psychological thing. But for us, the glass bottle was essential. Also, it's locally sourced. We know that Wossa has an exquisite taste. It's incredible. But obviously, because of its cost, it's not a water that you can drink every day, so you have to trade it for precious occasions.

[00:11:21.570] - Elena Berg

Yeah, exactly. Sort of reinforcing this notion of how we drink our water. Right. Is this the water we drink every day, or is this a water we drink with a special meal that has significance where not for hydration, but for a more of an epicurean experience?

[00:11:37.660] - Denise Hofmeister

Exactly. What we do right now is for all the restaurants that are supermarkets that are collaborating with us. We take back the bottles and we reuse them. So obviously, we can't do that if we ship bottles abroad. But if it's any way possible, we can exchange bottles and fill them again and bring them back.

[00:12:00.330] - Elena Berg

Wow, that's amazing.

[00:12:01.210] - Elena Berg

So you have set up a reusable glass program in Austria. Okay, that was actually going to be one of my questions. Because Austria is a relatively small country, I would imagine the distribution networks would be less complicated than in the US or other places where you have huge terrain, or Australia, for that matter. So you could actually feasibly set up a system of know, deposits and recollections.

[00:12:25.840] - Denise Hofmeister

Reusing the glass bottles is not only cheaper, but it is also a way for us to be more sustainable. What we also try is if we send our bottles abroad, I mean, outside of Austria, and we cannot recollect it, that we encourage people to reuse it in their own way. We have seen people using it as a flower vase. We have seen it. We put olive oil in it. And for us, it's great to see because we know the bottle is very pretty. It's beautiful. And just giving it another use, another life, it's perfect.

[00:13:00.810] - Rainer Hofmeister

We also met the agreement that only 50% of the spring will be used for bottling and to settle the water. And the rest is for the animals and for the nature.

[00:13:12.120] - Elena Berg

Is there a calculation that has to be done when you're assessing a spring to see how much water can be taken to remain sustainable? So, in other words, did you have a maximum you were kind of allowed to take, and you reduced that by 50%, or is taking 50% of that water what's considered sustainable? Does that question make sense?

[00:13:33.140] - Denise Hofmeister

Yeah, it makes sense. First of all, for us, we are not using 50%, yet. We are not lower. That's the limit that we agreed on. So it's not a limit that the government says we have to maintain. It's what we said. We are not going to use more.

[00:13:49.740] - Elena Berg

Than 50%, but 50% of all of the water that the spring produces, or 50% of what you could take legally?

[00:13:57.600] - Denise Hofmeister

I think there are no legal. No legal limits.

[00:14:00.060] - Rainer Hofmeister

There are no limits from the government. So this is only an agreement between the owner and us.

[00:14:06.540] - Elena Berg

Okay. So are there any regulations from the government about these privately owned water sources that affect small water farmers?

[00:14:14.540] - Denise Hofmeister

One of the interesting things is that nowadays in Austria, you can't buy any springs anymore.

[00:14:22.820] - Elena Berg

That's a new shift.

[00:14:25.280] - Rainer Hofmeister

It's very difficult to get some springs. A lot of them are sold to big brands. I don't have to mention it, but the government in Austria realized that it's really the gold of the new this year's and how expensive watercoot can be in the future.

[00:14:44.600] - Elena Berg

Okay, so then there's been a real focus of the government to prevent outside big companies from buying up water rights within the country itself. But then, privately, among Austrians who have land that's on a spring, those private ownership laws haven't changed.

[00:15:01.620] - Rainer Hofmeister

It's more and more difficult to use springs in commercial ways.

[00:15:06.800] - Elena Berg

I see.

[00:15:07.410] - Denise Hofmeister

Okay.

[00:15:07.680] - Elena Berg

So even for something like Wossa, which is a small company, that's becoming more difficult.

[00:15:13.860] - Elena Berg

So I found that 10% of the Austrian population is getting their drinking water from privately owned sources of groundwater. Now, Austria isn't the most enormous country, but that's still a lot of people. Almost a million. Just under 900,000, actually. That's a lot of responsibility of resource management in the hands of the public. Now that you've been in this world for a number of years and learned a lot along the way, do you feel like the general public has adequate knowledge about water?

[00:15:43.020] - Denise Hofmeister

I'm taking my grandparents as an example. Yesterday, we were at lunch at my grandparents place. My grandma wanted to wash some champagne glasses so we can celebrate. So she ran the glasses through the water, put the glasses on the table. The tap was open the whole time. She went for more glasses, and I was like, but, close the tap. And she was like, no, I have to wash some more. So that realization that, for her, water can just be flowing, it's an endless resource for many Austrians. Still, if you are conscious about problems in the world right now, where people don't have access to water for weeks or days, it makes you appreciate it a lot more. And I think also, that's a point that people in Austria have to understand at some point.

[00:16:30.480] - Elena Berg

Well, and that water scarcity, or at least access to fresh water, clean, fresh water, that scarcity will rise for everyone, even Austrians. Right?

[00:16:39.090] - Elena Berg

Presumably the hard part is, of course.

[00:16:41.650] - Elena Berg

You can't turn the water off in Austria, and that doesn't translate into somebody across the world having that much more water in their tap. Right. Sadly, these are also regional problems that need to be solved, but in general, that awareness of how precious a resource it is and will become even more precious with time. But you're lucky to live in a place where you're relatively protected, at least.

[00:17:02.180] - Elena Berg

For the short term.

[00:17:03.860] - Denise Hofmeister

I think in Austria at the moment, people are getting more conscious about water sources. Water in general, at the moment, people are still like, okay, our tap water is already that good. I don't have to worry about anything. Now I feel like people start to think about it a lot more, getting to know where the water comes from. Also about the water footprint. My opinion what we should do in general is to educate from young ages. I know that many schools already have programs where they teach about healthy eating, ecological food production and so on. But nearly none of these projects, they talk about water. And water is so essential to all of that.

[00:17:45.910] - Elena Berg

Well, I mean, I'm an educator myself of environmental science, so I'll always be in support of more water education. But objectively, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's needed, and water does underpin all of these things.

[00:18:03.800] - Elena Berg

Thank you so much for your time. I won't take any more of your time, but I just wanted to thank.

[00:18:07.280] - Elena Berg

You for being part of this. Austria's remarkable reliance on groundwater to sustain its population is quite something truly hard to imagine for anyone who doesn't get to experience it. Now that we've traveled, met and talked to small water farmers from a few different corners of the globe, I think now is a good time to reflect on it all. One of the things that I've learned is that context is crucially important when it comes to understanding anything, and certainly water. Every place we've visited, from England to India, South Africa, Australia and Austria, has varying levels of access and supply. This means that water needs and challenges look different wherever you go. The infrastructures available to supply water and to handle waste look different. All of this has prompted different choices related to business models. And of course, the water itself is different due to the unique source and its impact on minerality and taste. I suppose the biggest lesson I've learned from these conversations is that there are no simple fixes to our social and environmental problems. Let me be clear that learning about these mineral waters won't help meet the needs of millions of people.

[00:19:16.470] - Elena Berg

But there are two lessons here. First, these stories bring value to water. I hope my conversations with these small water farmers have convinced you that water comes in many forms and that not all water is the same. So now spread the word. Let everybody know this. Second, these conversations have highlighted the importance of local solutions. For the most part, the mineral waters I've been learning about are focused on bringing pleasure to people who already have what they need to survive. For the most part, mineral water is a luxury. So the question becomes, given water's symbolic meaning, how can those sources be drawn on sustainably with minimal environmental impact? Plastic is readily available and reliably recycled in India, for example. So it's not surprising that Ava water would integrate plastic into its business model. In the UK, crag spring water is focused on local distribution, which means that reusable glass is a good option for them. That brand is also developing an aluminum line. But in Australia, where recycled aluminum is very hard to source, that might not be the best way forward there. Not to get too sappy, but we also got to see how passionate individuals alongside engaged communities can potentially make a difference over natural resource management.

[00:20:29.360] - Elena Berg

It can be easy to feel like problems are so big, so much bigger than us, and that I think it's really important to platform these individual stories to give people hope and momentum. If I could say one final note about this tour of small bottled water factories. My goal was never to say that we should be drinking bottled water every day, all the time. Instead, my goal was threefold. One, to introduce and humanize the water sommelier and show that the bottled water industry is not just made up of these giant global conglomerates. Two, to show that not all waters are the same, right? That not all water is exactly H 20. There's more to it than that. And the mineral water that you drink comes with a story that includes a natural source, unique flavor qualities, and the people who make it accessible to you. And three, to encourage you to get curious about where your water comes from, whether that involves experimenting with fine water brands or simply paying more attention to the taste profile of the tap waters that you're drinking. So I hope I've accomplished at least these goals. The first five episodes of this series focused heavily on people's stories.

[00:21:34.920] - Elena Berg

Moving on from this arc, the next couple of episodes will look a little, or, well, I guess, sound a little different. We're going to be meeting some researchers and experts in some of the most pressing water issues, including tap water standards, water ownership, and the future of the fine water industry. As always, thanks for listening and see you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of something in the Water. Don't forget to check the show notes for information and links about this episode's guests, Denise and Rainer Hoffmeister, please join us back here wherever you're listening to this in one week's time. For our next episode, we've finished our story arc of small water farmers, and now we'll move on to some major themes and debates around water. And we've spent a lot of time talking about the bottle. Next week, we switch to the tap. We talk to professor and researcher Jael Tosin from Heidelberg University in Germany about trust and safety of tap water. What influences consumer choice and how climate change is going to be a game changer. For tap water. I'm your host, Elena Berg. This podcast was produced and written by myself and Clark Marquezi.

[00:22:58.450] - Elena Berg

This is a Pine forest media production, and full transcripts can be found@pineforestpods.com. The music you're listening to was produced by Joseph Salvat, my friend and previous guest on the show. Cover art was made by Sarah Glavin, and the show was edited by Clark Marchesi. Finally, thank you to the American University of Paris for making this podcast possible. If you feel called, writing a review and giving us a five star rating is the best thing you can do to help us out so we can make more sciencey podcasts in the future. Bye bye and see you next week.