If you want to join the global jet set, never mind the super-yachts, $10,000 jeans or weekends at Cap Ferrat. Today's must-have item is luxury water. The appeal isn't just mineral content; Austria's Wildalp brand bottles water under the glow of a Viennese full moon. Others are sourced from freshwater icebergs, Icelandic glaciers and Fijian volcanic springs. Then, consider what's glued to the bottle, including, yes, Swarovski crystals in the case of Bling H2O. At $40 a litre, the Tennessee-sourced brand recently topped Forbes's list of the world's "most outrageously priced items."

A little over a year ago, B.C.'s Tim and Andrea Bates tapped into the lucrative niche market with a high-priced water sourced in the province's Coast Mountains range. Priced at $38.50 a litre internationally, or 5,000 times the cost of tap water, 10 Thousand BC launched at last year's star-thick Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Today, it's sold at exclusive health clubs, restaurants and hotels, including Claridge's Hotel, the London landmark, which, last year, introduced a "water menu." Already, water connoisseurs — admittedly, still a rare breed — rank the emerging brand among the market's most prestigious, and pricey, bottles.

"It's my most elite water," says Diane Felicissimo, owner of Via Genova, a high-end water bar in Chappaqua, N.Y., home to the Clinton clan. (The Clintons, including daughter Chelsea, visited last Father's Day, but opted for a bottle sourced from South Africa's Cape Karoo.) "Everyone describes it like a melted ice cube," she says. "We sell out so fast," says Felicissimo, who stocks 80 brands.

The sparely designed bottle is finished in a three-quarter frosting. Just the neck is left clear — "so you can see the ice chips when served after a 10-minute fast freeze," Andrea explains. "Most waters — when frozen — will go cloudy," says Tim. "When you freeze glacier water, it looks like a cut diamond. You'll even see the ridges on the crystals." "Presentation is everything," says Michael Mascha, a water sommelier with a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, where he specialized in food anthropology. "Every good sommelier will tell you a little story about the wine he or she is pouring," he says. "Does it make the wine taste better? No. Does it make the wine feel more special? Absolutely." The same is true for water, he says, adding that glacial water pairs perfectly with sushi.

And there's a fine yarn behind 10 Thousand BC, named, Tim says, to honour the glacier's age. (The blockbuster movie came later.) The water, one of just three premium Canadian brands, is sourced in the Hat Mountain glacier, 200 km north of Vancouver. There, Tim, who used to install drinking-water systems in Kelowna homes with his father, fills a glass-lined barge with some 450,000 litres of melting glacial water, which he ferries to Vancouver, a two-day return trip he makes twice a year. Stainless-steel trucks transfer it to a plant on Kelowna's industrial Westside, where it is bottled and corked to the sound of music. "No, not rock music," Andrea, a former aquatic therapist, says with a weary smile. They play instrumental or classical music to the water, because it has "memory," explains Dirk Stroda, the company's European director of sales, noting the research of Masaru Emoto, a New Age Japanese scientist known for his controversial claim that water responds to music and human emotion.

The Bateses bought the source rights to the glacier in 1999, and sat on the holding, waiting for the luxury market to emerge, says Tim. The couple, who have two teenaged sons, met in the '80s, when he was training with the Canadian national track team and she was attending York University; the high-end water is their first business venture together. Tim says they don't even bother marketing in Canada, focusing their attention on Europe, Asia and the Gulf countries. "In Dubai, there is nothing but high-end," adds Stroda. "There is no average." Though spending on luxury goods and services fell by four per cent last year, Tim's not scared of pending economic gloom. "If you're paying $14,000 a night for your room, a $40 bottle of water isn't going to be a concern," he says, adding that less than one per cent of the population will pay for their product anyway.

But what about its taste? Chilled to near-freezing, served in a beautiful, thin glass goblet, 10 Thousand BC tastes different from regular old Kelowna tap water. Is it a $40 difference? Depends who's picking up the tab.

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