Perrier, the sparkling water from Languedoc in the south France, is largely given credit for starting the current bottled water craze in the United States.
The spring, which has bubbled up 21,000 gallons an hour since then, is claimed to have slaked the thirst of Hannibal and his troops 2,200 years ago and bathed Romans in the first century. They stumbled on odd pond in southern France, where cold spring water bubbled as if it were boiling.
In the Middle Ages the French took to bathing in the water and lying in the mud around the spring.
In 1860, a Dr. Perrier bought what local had called Les Bouillens, or ‘bubbling waters’ and changed the name to Source Perrier.
Three years later, Emperor Napoleon III authorized by decree the bottling of its water.
The Perrier company, named for Dr. Louis Perrier, owned the spring for a brief period from 1898 to 1903, began selling bottled water in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1903, A.W. St. John Harmsworth bought the spring from Perrier and formed Compagnie de la Source Perrier.
He brought over his university friend, Reginald Southwell, to build machinery which would bottle the water as it pump up from the ground at a rate nearly 100 000 liters an hour.
By the 1930s, the company was selling almost 20 million bottles per year.
The sale of bottled water began modestly enough as a trend in the 1970s, when Perrier introduced bottled sparkling water to urban professionals via small green glass bottles.
Immediately, bottled water became associated with conspicuously consumption, and unnecessary purchased designed to simply show off wealth.
Perrier first crossed the ocean in the early 1900s but wasn’t actively marketed here until 1977.
In 2002, Perrier unveiled the Perrier Fluo brand. Perrier Fluo is an innovative soft drink whose unique taste produces sensory and emotional reactions.
Perrier Sparkling water
