0 m the rain, on the ridge

The water you drink today
fell on the ridge in 1982

It soaked into the ground at the top of the cuesta, crossed thirty meters of clay, ninety meters of basalt and sixty of sandstone before reaching the point where we draw it. Isotope dating puts the average at forty-three years — and it's that time, not a filter, that makes the water what it is.

Depth of the wellhead

180 m

Average age of the water

43 years

Basalt above the reservoir

92 m

Temperature at the outlet

26 °C

Go down the well See the analysis

−6 m the clay

Thirty meters of clay,
and this is where time begins

Clay is not a filter: it is slowness. Water moves down through it a few centimeters a day, and it's that delay that gives organic matter time to be consumed before anything reaches deeper. No surface technology reproduces thirty meters of waiting.

Thickness of the layer

32 m

Speed of the water

4 cm/day

Time in this layer alone

~2 years

It is also the first barrier against what comes from above. Fertilizer applied at the surface takes decades to cross compacted clay, and most of it never crosses at all.

−38 m the basalt

Ninety-two meters of rock
that no one can contaminate

Basalt is lava that cooled and cracked. Water moves through the fractures, not through the stone itself — and the rock as a whole works as a lid over the reservoir beneath it. It is the reason the aquifer is called confined: it has no contact with the surface at any point above the wellhead.

Thickness of the flow

54 m

Age of the rock

133 million years

Surface wells in the area

0

We didn't choose this place for the water. We chose it for the stone sitting on top of it.

−92 m the sandstone

Sand from a desert
that existed before dinosaurs flew

Below the basalt begins the Botucatu sandstone: dunes of a Jurassic desert, buried and turned to rock. The grains are rounded and all the same size, which leaves an empty space between them of nearly a fifth of the volume. That void is where the water lives.

Thickness crossed

60 m

Porosity

18 %

Origin of the rock

dune, 145 million years

The sandstone is what gives the water its mineral profile: dissolved silica in high amounts and practically no calcium. In the glass, that shows up as a light-bodied water without the bitter finish that carbonate leaves.

−152 m the aquifer

Here the rock is full,
and under pressure

From one hundred and fifty-two meters down, the sandstone is saturated. Because the aquifer is confined, the water arrives at the well pushed from below — it rises one hundred and thirty meters on its own and the pump only does the last stretch. There is no aeration along the way, so it never touches air until the bottle.

Level that rises on its own

130 m

Licensed flow

18,000 L/h

Annual recharge of the area

4.2× what is drawn

The license allows eighteen thousand liters an hour and we use eleven thousand. The difference is not commercial slack: it is the margin that keeps the reservoir's pressure stable year after year.

−180 m the wellhead

From the rock to the bottle,
forty meters of pipe

Bottling happens forty meters from the mouth of the well, and the pipe between the two is closed stainless steel. There is no holding tank, no treatment and nothing added — what the law calls natural mineral water.

Why is high silica a good thing?

Silica is the sandstone's mineral and it is what gives the sensation of soft water, without the bitterness calcium carbonate leaves behind. Thirty-two milligrams per liter is high for Brazil, and it is a consequence of the rock, not a choice.

What does nitrate below 0.2 mean?

That there is no surface contamination. Nitrate is the first sign of sewage or fertilizer reaching an aquifer, and in a shallow well it shows up before anything else. Below the detection limit means the ninety-two meters of basalt are doing their job.

Will the water run out?

The area's natural recharge is four times greater than what is drawn, and the well's static level is measured every week. In nine years it has varied thirty centimeters.

Why isn't it cold at the outlet?

Because it comes out at twenty-six degrees Celsius: the temperature of the rock a hundred and eighty meters down. The geothermal gradient is real and the water arrives warm. It is chilled after bottling.