The £5 a bottle mineral water - from a cloud in the South Seas

The £5 a bottle mineral water - from a cloud in the South Seas

By STEVE D'ANTAL Last updated at 21:57 28 7? 2007

?Cloud Juice? is set to be an exclusive tipple ? at £5 a bottle

A plastic roof on a tiny windswept island off the Australian coast is the unlikely source of the most expensive bottled water ever to arrive in the UK.

Rainwater collected on King Island, near Tasmania, will be sold under the name Cloud Juice for more than £5 a bottle once it makes the 11,000-mile trip to Britain.

King Island water is claimed to be the purest in the world because the trade winds carrying the rain clouds travel 7,000 miles from South America without passing over any land, and therefore encounter little or no pollution, before arriving at the island.

Cloud Juice is the brainchild of Tasmanian-born Duncan McFie, 40, who noticed the quality of the water when he arrived on the island in 1991 to begin a teaching career.

He said: "I knew nothing about water but I saw people kept coming to the hostel where I lived to use the rainwater tank because the town water from bore holes tastes so bad.

"I knew we had the cleanest air in the world here, but what I didn't know was whether having clean air meant you would have clean water, so I began four years of research, working in school holidays.

"I didn't drink the water myself. All I saw was a business opportunity that would allow me to pay for more skiing."

Helped by friends, Mr McFie launched Cloud Juice in 1997 after signing up 35 investors. He started with just a small roof to collect the water and has taken a decade to turn a profit.

His big break came in 1999 when ultra-trendy Parisian store Colette decided to stock the water.

That led to a place on the menu at legendary Spanish restaurant El Bulli, near Barcelona, which is consistently chosen as the world's top place to eat.

Now a tiny factory on the island produces 100,000 bottles a year but demand could soar further if it is selected by Claridge's hotel in London for a new "water menu", featuring 20 waters of the world, complete with tasting notes.

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Pennies from heaven: Duncan Mcfie and the roof collecting the rain that could make him rich

At least one other British restaurant is already interested in the water, and if it proves a success in Claridge's, Mr McFie is expecting a surge of interest from other stockists.

The origins of Cloud Juice are far removed from the glitz of the Mayfair hotel.

It falls on a corrugated plastic roof on a remote corner of sparsely populated King Island, which lies in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania.

At first glance, the rolling farmland might be mistaken for Devon or Somerset, but the gravel road to the site is littered with the corpses of dozens of wallabies.

The dents on his aged Land Rover are evidence that Mr McFie regularly adds to the toll as he pulls giant water butts back to his bottling plant.

Once there, the water is filtered to remove any traces of dust that may have got into it, and passed through ultraviolet light to kill any bacteria before being bottled and shipped around the world.

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A tiny factory on Tasmania produces 100,000 bottles of 'cloud juice' a year

Until now, King Island has relied on the export of beef, blue cheese, shellfish and bull kelp, a giant seaweed that is sent to Scotland to be used in lipstick and ice cream.

But now water is the talk of the area and islanders describe Mr McFie as an "icon".

He employs six of his past and present high school students to work in his bottling plant, in a converted seafood warehouse.

Mr McFie said: "I don't want to sound pretentious, but water is becoming more like wine. Our product is designed to be served in a restaurant or dinner party ? not to be put in the kids' lunchboxes.

"I think people need to get over the cost of it and there are plenty of people out there who don't look at price when they order a meal.

They'll spend £100 on a bottle of wine and if you put a decent bottle of water on the bill, then so what?

"I thought the UK would be a prime market because they'd understand the name and like it, and because the money is there. When I've walked around London it seems a ritzy place.

"People are getting fussier. Rainwater is a lot softer than ground water ? mineral water ? so it has a really smooth finish to the taste, and that's what people notice."

The water costs about £5 per 750ml in shops abroad, but is likely to go for substantially more if chosen by Claridge's, where it would be listed on a menu like wine, including details of its origin.

Waters already given the nod include MaHaLo, drawn from 3,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean and 10 Thousand BC, from Canada, which comes in a corked glass bottle, like a fine wine.

Claridge's Renaud Gregoire said: "We created the water menu following demand from American customers, who are used to the choice.

"I treat it like tea or wine, as each tastes different depending on where it comes from. Different water can accompany different food, depending on its flavour.

"The water menu will have tasting notes like a wine list, including recommendations. But if people want tap water, they can have it."