By Michael Kelly

The most direct way to access Berkshire County’s wealth of cultural amenities is to drive north on route 272, a felicitous, forested, rural byway. Just 4.5 miles from Norfolk’s village green, near the cutoff to Campbell Falls, you cross into Massachusetts and subconsciously absorb subtle, topographical changes. Two miles further up the road, high on a tree, hangs a small sign with an emblem depicting two deer frolicking in the mountains on their hind legs. You have arrived at the entrance to Berkshire Mountain Springs, nestled in the hamlet of Southfield, Mass.

This spring house marks the site of the original well.

In the 1960’s, Dale Bosworth, an entrepreneur who was born in Tennessee and, after starting several businesses (including a potato chip company on Long Island), bought the old Obadiah Pike farm in Southfield with its 18^th-century farmhouse and pristine woodlands brimming with secluded, natural springs. Impressed with the bracing, clean taste of his pure mountain water and inspired by testimonials of friends and neighbors, Bosworth built a rudimentary bottling operation in back of his house in 1970 and began delivering his water to customer’s doorsteps at a time when there were few players in the bottled water game. Bosworth proved to be prophetic. Berkshire Mountain Springs (BMS) flourished and was poised to catch the bottled water wave that broke in the 1980’s and continues, unabated, today.

Four of Bosworth’s five children still own the company, a thriving, second-generation family business dedicated to a quality product and personal service. One of the owners, Janis Graham-Jones, and her husband, Felix, an Englishman, who is director of quality control and supervisor of the bottling plant, have lived in Norfolk for over 30 years, where BMS has some 80 at-home and several business customers, including Infinity Hall and the Norfolk Country Club.

Starting as rain and snow high in the hills, precipitation collects in unspoiled aquifers (non-porous layers of solid rock and clay) before coming to the surface, as it has for centuries, in various locations on BMS’s 300 acres of protected forest. At the primary source on a slope above the bottling plant, the water is pure enough to drink as it bubbles to the surface, but being regulated by the FDA as a food product, it must undergo a strict regimen of filtration after it is piped to the plant.

Much of the company’s business comes from the sale of 3- and 5-gallon water bottles.

Tucked in the Berkshire woods, BMS’s immaculate, state-of-the-art bottling plant is a hive of activity. Ninety percent of the business involves the sale of reusable, three- and five-gallon bottles of water which are delivered on a schedule directly to homes and businesses. The other 10 percent of sales comprises cases of 16.9-ounce individual bottles sold at retail. These can also be personalized with labels for business promotions, weddings and other celebratory events. Environmentally conscious from the beginning, BMS maintains an aggressive recycling program for their plastic bottles, which they collect, sanitize and put back into the rotation. Coffee and tea K-cups with dispensers are also available for delivery to customers (60 percent home/40 percent business) in several states within a 100-mile radius.

Felix Graham-Jones’s background in marine zoology well suits him to oversee and monitor quality control of BMS water. Because the water comes from such a pure, protected source, processing is kept to a minimum. A safe, multiple-stage filtration system extracts sediment and suspended particles down to 0.5 microns. For further purification, ozone is bubbled through the water before it goes into clean, sanitized recycled bottles. According to Graham-Jones, rigorous testing of BMS water over the years has led him to the conclusion that it compares favorably in taste and quality to celebrated Evian water from the French Alps.

BMS water is regularly tested by an independent laboratory from Ypsilanti, Michigan for 64 organic and 41 inorganic chemicals regulated by the FDA. As an extra safeguard, it is tested for 59 unregulated contaminants. Water may be colorless, odorless and transparent, but under the microscope, it is saturated with invisible, dissolved minerals and trace elements that give the water we drink delicate, nuanced taste and sensory notes which are not always discernible. Municipal water, regulated by the EPA, is treated with chlorine and other chemicals to mitigate the effects of open water residue and wildlife waste byproducts. BMS water, drawn directly from the source, has an unadulterated, reliable, refreshing taste.

Dedicated Norfolk residents, the Graham-Joneses often donate BSM water to the library, churches, schools and local charity events and offer tours of the bottling plant by appointment.