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Perrier - the l'eau down
Like so many continental imports the name Perrier has acquired
a fashionable status which would no doubt have amused the company's imaginative
founder. However, this particular trans-Manche link goes back much further
than most people realise. 
Louis Perrier was by all accounts a pretty remarkable man
- médicin,
one-time maire of Nimes, inventor of an advanced electric system for monitoring
rail-traffic (which he subsequently sold to the Germans) and, most important
of all, as it turns out, proprietor of an organisation bearing the snappy title "La
Société des Eaux Minérales, Boissons et Produits Hygiéniques
de Vergèze". In 1894, the doctor leased the spring with an option
to purchase and it was in 1898, when he did just that, that the name Perrier
was first associated with the spring. The town of Vergèze, 17 km from
Nimes, had sprung - literally - to fame as the source of a naturally-sparkling
mineral water which had once refreshed the Roman legions from Narbonne.
Louis Perrier devoted himself to developing the spring and the bottling process, developing a hermetically sealed bottle to package and ship the water. He wanted to sell water to the French, to bring health to a population more accustomed to wine, beer and absinthe. A young Englishman - St John Harmsworth (whose brothers, the Lords Rothermere and Northcliff owned, respectively, the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail) happened to be in France to study the language and he and Perrier met by chance. Perrier took him to the spring and Harmsworth was impressed. He was the investor Perrier sought, and he leased the spring in 1903, and subsequently bought it from Perrier. As a mark of respect, the new acheteur anglais named the enterprise "Perrier" and retained the venerable logo - unchanged since the days of Napoléon III - proclaiming proudly: Fournisseurs brevetés de sa Majest, le feu roi d'Angleterre. The sparkling newcomer was dispatched in its legendary "peardrop" green bottles (reputed to have been inspired by gymnasts' bats, to establish a sporting image) to the far-flung corners of the Great British Empire. To many ex-pats contending with poor-quality and often bacteria-ridden local water supplies, Perrier was the answer to a prayer.
The spring reverted to French ownership after the Second World War. Gustav Leven, a young broker in Paris, found a neglected spring but a factory full of willing and experienced workers. He figured that if the water had been selling for three times the price of a bottle of wine, there was money to be made. He invested in the plant, and along with another French partner started the amazing saga of the modern Perrier product.
Recent years have witnessed the appearance of previously unthinkable formats to sell Perrier around the globe. The introduction of the can and the plastic bottle, designer mixes of coloured and flavoured Perrier, and in 2003, Eau de Perrier, a light sparkling water. Le quart Perrier, originally marketed as a medicinal tonic, has become the symbol of the Good Life - le champagne des eaux de table.
French Gastronomy
