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To keep healthy and limber, we've been encouraged to drink lots of water. But what do you do if you don't enjoy the taste of H2O, especially when it's been heavily treated with fluoride and who knows what else, leaving a chemical residue on your tongue?

Brooklyn Seltzer
Brooklyn Seltzer. Flickr/Julie

Our solution: We drink seltzer. And not just any seltzer, but the old-fashioned, resolutely fizzy kind which comes in hard-to-lift glass bottles and is delivered to our door in a wooden crate by Brooklyn Seltzer Boys.

Much of the pleasure we derive from this potable is, admittedly, gastronomic. With its sturdy bubbles and clean finish, the seltzer produced by Brooklyn Seltzer Boys tastes real good. And it’s fun to drink, too. Pressing the siphon, waiting for the release of noise and liquid, is so much more absorbing than unscrewing the cap of a bottle.

Then again, in a household where the study of history and of material culture rules the roost, the joy we take from our daily doses of seltzer has as much to do with its physicality as its tastiness. Not only do the bottles themselves come in a range of colors, from clear and frosty white to marine blue and forest green, but, so, too, does their lettering. It runs the gamut from stark black to feisty red.

More fascinating still are the names of the companies that once manufactured the stuff. Their ranks include High Rock Seltzer, American Beverage Co., Celia’s Bottling Company, S.G. Seltzer (the initials stood for Sam Ginsburg), and, this week’s favorite, Dov Shraga.

Largely an East Coast phenomenon, seltzer, the “poor man’s champagne,” was produced all over the United States, even as far away as Wyoming. Its manufacturers went to some lengths to tout the beverage’s virtues. Some spoke of it as “sparkling,” others as “carbonated,” and still others of it being both “siphonated” and “ozonized.”

One way or another, seltzer was -- and continues to be -- good for you. Drink up!