Council of the Million Visitation, 67th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): They say water is tasteless, but that is not correct. That statement is a product of anthropocentric bias. 

To say water is tasteless implies that tastelessness is a property of water. In fact, it's the human tongue that can't taste water. If our taste buds and senses were wired just a little bit differently, we might be able to taste water. I'm sure that some other living creature can taste water just fine. On the other hand, fish probably can't taste the salt in seawater. 

I suspect that those primate ancestors of ours that could discern the impurities in water had a higher survival rate than those that couldn't and lived to pass down their genes. One way to reduce the noise-to-signal ratio in discerning impurities in water is for pure water to taste "neutral," that is, to have no taste at all. That way, salt or other chemicals or organic matter would be all the more obvious. 

But pure water itself isn't "tasteless," it's just that our tongues are insufficient to the task.

Next question: is air really "clear"?