New England has three great dynasties: Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots and Concord, N.H. and its drinking water.

At least, that’s how City Manager Tom Aspell sees things. He’s not wrong: The capital city has won the title of best drinking water in the state of New Hampshire in six of the last seven competitions, including this year.

Fifth-grader Liliana Snelson didn’t know that as she peered into a half-full white Dixie cup, took a sip, and then another, savoring it for a moment. Then, she downed the rest, looking up and closing her eyes tightly.

Liliana, and fourth and fifth graders from across the state, were asked to blindly taste five tap waters from five New Hampshire municipalities: Concord, Hooksett, Manchester, Plymouth and Rochester. Each then chose which one they thought tasted the best.

Liliana, from the Maple Wood Elementary in Somersworth, chose the cup labeled “A” — Concord’s water. She chose it because it “tasted like clear.” Some of the others “just taste crusty” she said, “like when water sits in a cup for, like, days.”

For the same reasons, though, classmate Janaya Thurston preferred the cup labeled “B” from Hooksett — highly decorated water in its own right. Hooksett’s water took home second in the country at the Great American Water Taste Contest, which the National Rural Water Association hosted in February.

Picking a favorite from five tap waters was, for some, tricky. As one student struggling to make his vote put it, “they all taste like water.”

Many students will prefer the water most like what they have at home, explained Sophie Ricard, the environmental compliance manager for the city of Concord’s water treatment plant.

“They usually vote what they know,” she said. “What they know is, this is good water because I drink it every day.”

Kaiden Doughty from William Allen Elementary in Rochester, though, placed Concord at the bottom of his ranking.

“It tasted like tap water,” he said plainly.

The state drinking water contest was just one portion of the New Hampshire Drinking Water Festival, where the Department of Environmental Services hosts professionals from around the state to show fourth and fifth grades how water treatment — and contamination — works.

The event also includes a water science fair. This year’s winner was Rochester’s Hollis Magee, whose project unpacked the effects of pollution on wildlife in a river. Two standouts from Keene — Reid Connell’s demonstration of natural stream filtering and Quinn Vieth’s “pitch perfect” water xylophone — also placed in the top. Liv Marino won first place for her poem.

As they cycled through projects and stations, kids from each school stopped to sip and judge the tap water.

“I love that the kids get to pick, because they’re so unbiased. They’re very blatant,” Ricard said. “Someone said, ‘this one tastes like bread.’ And I’m like, ‘How does water taste like bread?’”

As students made their way from cup to cup, noses scrunched in disapproval at ones that tasters said had a “chemically” or even “salty” flavor.

That’s probably to do with the type of chlorination and how much of it the treatment system uses, Ricard said.

“The perfect water recipe is it tastes like nothing,” she said. “If you can taste the bleach, or smell it, that right away deters people.”

Groundwater systems tend to carry more minerals than surface water systems, which can lend a metallic flavor, or mean more treatment to try and get that out.

Concord’s advantage is that it comes from a well-protected surface water system that also, because of its size, can rely on slow-acting monochloramine treatment that doesn’t produce a strong taste.

The capital city’s drinking water is pulled from Penacook Lake, also known from a previous vintage as Long Pond, where all recreational activity has been banned since 1951. The city also owns and protects all of the land surrounding the body of water.

“Once a water source is contaminated, you can almost never get it clean. It’s contaminated for life,” Ricard said. “We have fantastic raw water quality...it almost makes it so easy to treat it, because you’re most of the way there. You just polish it.”

Concord has been protective of its drinking water in more ways than just environmentally. Neighboring Bow and Pembroke — dealing with contamination in their water supplies — are hoping to link up with Concord’s water. City leaders aren’t so sure they want to share, both for capacity and economic reasons. They’re awaiting the results of a federally funded study into whether Concord’s system can handle selling water to neighboring towns.

In the meantime, Concord’s award-winning status earns it praise and pride from those leaders.

When Byron Champlin took his wife out to dinner for Mother’s Day, they were asked by the hostess if they wanted still, sparkling or tap water.

“I said ‘I want to have some of that great Concord tap water,’” Champlin recounted this week as the city celebrated another aquatic championship. “She said ‘It is very good,’ and I said, ‘No, it’s the best.’ ”

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. She participated in the blind taste test. To learn which one she chose, you can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.