Fast forward several years to that dinner table conversation in Connecticut and the family’s search.
“We bought various brands of bottled water,” says Elisabeth. “Looking at the labels we thought that we would be able to figure out the defining differences of different water qualities. But we quickly found out that there was only the smallest amount of information – usually on how much sodium was in the water – and it never said anything about the essential quality of that water.”
“We thought there must be a standard for water because water is so important to us as humans and without it you can't function more than a couple of days. But there isn't. And to this day, there is no official highest standard. So we had to create one.”
Undeterred the Muhrs enlisted the help of water experts, scientists, doctors and nutritionists to find the standard for the highest quality water. From their research they were able to establish eight core parameters and four secondary parameters for defining the ultimate drinking water quality – including levels of pH, sodium, nitrates and oxygen – which they’ve termed the Hallstein Octagon.
Using these criteria, the family tasked scientists with testing water from a large number of sources under laboratory conditions.
“We were shocked to discover that all these waters had a horrible, abysmal, standard quality. A lot of the substances in the water aren’t regulated and can be harmful in large quantities. I had assumed that the regulators were looking out for my best health interests and wound’t allow the substances to be there, but they did. We were so startled that we decided to find the well with the perfect water.”
In what was fast becoming an “expensive family hobby”, the Muhrs commissioned hydrologists to help locate certain patterns of geological folds where they might find wells that might contain the perfect water they desired.
Elisabeth speaks with such authority about contamination, limestone, copper and oxidisation that it’s clear that this was as much an enthusiastic quest as an opportunity to learn.
“It was very important that it was uncontaminated limestone. But contaminated does not mean that this is poisonous. In geology, it means that it's a pure limestone without bands of iron or copper. For instance, when you go on a hike, you see often in the stones bands of different colours of stone. And if it's green its copper and red is iron and the water that was flowing, through oxidised it. What it does is depletes the water from the oxygen, so the oxygen that's loosely or is abandoned in water gets sucked up from the from the copper or the iron or other substances in terms of biological substance.
“Oxygen wants to combine with other substances to oxidise and if the limestone is pure, it does not deplete the water from the oxygen, but it enhances it with magnesium and calcium. So that's one thing easily understandable.”
What was also important in terms of the geological environment that the family sought was glacial activity. As a glacier moves, it grounds the stone underneath through its immense weight to a compacted layer called a moraine.
“The ground up stone acts like a lid on the underlying folds like natural concrete, so the environmental pollution cannot trigger or seep through to the aquifer,” says Elisabeth, explaining that an aquifer is a body of sediment underneath the surface where the water flows and is constantly replenished.
Elisabeth adds: “An aquifer is not a lake, it is actually like an underground river.”
Thirdly, they needed an artesian well – meaning that water would reach the surface through its own pressure without the need for pumping.
“This is important because as soon as you start pumping water it immediately changes the makeup of the water and the potential power of the water in your body. The energy that the water naturally has if you start treating it, changes it. That's what we didn't want. It was very, very important that the water came from a very deep, protected artesian well.”
Five years after the family’s initial conversation, they received independent reports from American universities and an oil and gas exploration companies whose services they’d enlisted which suggested the location of a deep, protected artesian well. Each of them pointed to a very small area, not in North or South America as the Muhrs had expected, but in the family’s homeland of Austria.
“At first, we thought that they were pulling our leg and making a joke. But no, there is a glacier, which is a geological phenomenon called the Hallstatt-Dachstein limestone. It lies in a Uneseco World Heritage Site. Hallstatt is called with ‘cradle of the Celts’ with 7000 years of human history there.”
The land is owned by Austria’s forestry service but the family negotiated the right to drill, with Elisabeth’s engineering background serving them well in the careful negotiations.
“It's very expensive and at 215 metres we struck an aquifer. The water shot up. It was just incredible,” says Elisabeth, likening the experience to pushing down on a French press. “Imagine drilling a hole in the top of the lid and watching the liquid spurt out.”
Liquid that had begun as raindrops in the mountains and after an eight-year journey through layers of limestone arrived in the aquifer.
“We tested the water for over a year. And the quality was exactly what we wanted to have. It stayed stable, rich in oxygen, no nitrates, no environmental pollution, no microplastics, no PFAS [Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances], no antibiotics.”
The tests confirmed that the water at the Dachstein well was suitable for bottling and that the aquifer is constantly replenishing. It has also never been exposed to atmospheric contamination, does not impact other water sources and the water is stable, with no change to its make-up over time.
Having enjoyed the water themselves – and assured of its benefit to their health – the family began serving to friends at dinner parties. The positive response was enough for the family to investigate if it would be viable to produce the water commercially.
Once again they drew upon their appetite for persistence by negotiating 57 permits, a 99-year lease with the forestry service and the building of a state-of-the-art bottling facility within the picturesque environment.
“Sustainability is a huge issue for us. Our filling plant is in the very end of a valley, and there is basically no other building around,” says Elisabeth. “When we leased the land, from the National Forest Service, we very carefully cleared only the smallest piece where the actual building is. We wanted to keep the beautiful area pristine.
“We didn't want to be an eyesore because we are lucky that we found the water and it is sustainable because we don't take out more than comes out naturally. We only harvest what mother nature lets us have.”
The system used to bottle the water differs from other water companies too.
“We do not treat the water, there's no UV, no heating, filtering or adding substances. A lot of companies add substances to make it last,” says Elisabeth. “Basically, at our plant, the water flows from that wellhead straight into the bottle – and without any touching or moving it because if you move or treat water then you change its makeup.
“We had to find out how to do that – and it’s not easy. One of the things which was important is that the water is very cold, the exit temperature is 5.5°C and there are no bacteria in that kind of temperature. But if you have a well and is has a higher temperature, you have to treat it or add substances to remove the bacteria.”
