In the arid highlands near the town of Vergèze in southern France, the sun beats down on a small stone house as the buzz of cicadas fills the air. Until a few months ago, beneath this tile-roofed structure, a pump reached 159meters into the ground to tap a spring to source one of the world’s best-known mineral waters: Perrier.
Symbolizing privileged Frenchness, Perrier is a billion-dollar brand, its pear-shaped green bottles found on boardroom tables and in high-end restaurants from New York and London to Hong Kong. The bubbly quencher is among the standout alternatives to sugar-filled sodas for health-conscious urban consumers.
After heavy rains this year, water at the well — one of seven used for Perrier — showed traces of fecal matter, prompting its suspension in April and the destruction of more than two million bottles. Earlier that month, a heavily redacted 2023 report from a regulator leaked to the French media and seen by Bloomberg showed that traces of pesticides banned over two decades ago and linked to cancer were found in the water where Perrier is sourced. In September, the brand’s Swiss owner, Nestlé SA, agreed to pay €2 million ($2.2 million) to settle a case alleging it had committed fraud by filtering its water, using methods that are illegal in France for mineral waters that are supposed to be natural. The company has now been sued by consumer rights group Foodwatch, which says the settlement lets it off the hook too easily by allowing it to “bury the case.” Nestlé Waters France declined to comment on the lawsuit but reaffirmed that the safety and quality of Perrier have always been guaranteed.
More than three decades after the infamous Perrier recall in 1990, when the detection of very small amounts of benzene resulted in 160 million bottles of the mineral water being taken off shelves in 120 countries — one of the bigge