France's alternative tipples

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In Reims, our guide Jean-Paul, is amazed when I mention our next destination.

“What?” he blurts out, “You come to Champagne and then you must see water?”

We’re headed to Vittel, just across the border of Champagne. It’s first on my list of famous French mineral waters to locate. I want to see where the water originates. I’m going to the source.

“I don’t know anyone who has been to Vittel!” Dismissively, Jean-Paul says it, punctuated by an impressive Gallic shrug.

I don’t either, but I’ve always wanted to know more about the drink the French consume most – yes, more even than wine. They’re inordinately proud of these waters that burst out in various parts of the country after lengthy filtered journeys through hundreds of metres of rock.

In Vittel, a bright modern town still largely concerned with the waters, we visit Les Thermes de Vittel founded in 1854.

In the large lobby area, we sample waters from taps along one wall labelled Bonne Source, Grande Source and Source Hepar. Then, in the rather Roman-inspired building housing the Grande Source, we again sip paper-cup samples of the water that spurts up through rock tunnels from deep underground.

Jerome, our guide, takes us on a tour of the spa itself. We discover cubicles where you can be douched and squirted and pummelled by water in a wide variety of ways – and places! It seems your kidneys can be massaged with jets of hot or cold water as easily as can your shoulders – or other areas.

I pick up a leaflet that suggests using these waters internally and externally could help ‘rheumatological conditions, after-effects of osteoarticular traumas, urinary conditions, digestive conditions and metabolic illness’. We see slimming showers and ‘affusion’ showers. Some, we don’t dare ask about.

Generally the Romans were first to discover thermal springs in France, but legend has it that after Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees, he rested his elephants near the place now known as the source of Perrier. Much later, in the eighteenth century those who adopted the spa movement reinstated ancient Roman baths all over the country. By now people realized the waters had therapeutic and health benefits. They bathed in them but also guzzled copious amounts.

Restaurant menus throughout the country list them: Perrier, Badoit, Vittel, Vichy, Evian, Volvic and often a dozen more. Each has its fans. Aficionados argue the finer points of them – Vichy (too strong or saline for some), Perrier (too fizzy) although the company is proud of its 'fifty million bubbles’, Volvic (a little flat), and so on.

Most agree that Badoit, with those minuscule bubbles lightly tickling the nose, is king.

St Galmier, closer to Lyon, was a popular spa town in the 18th-century and remains of Roman thermal baths have been found there. Badoit’s name is spelt out on wide lawns surrounding an attractive gazebo-style shelter. 

There’s a central core of taps and we arrive to find a stream of people arriving loaded with crates of empty bottles. We join the queue and fill the only couple of bottles we have brought with us in the car.

Auguste Badoit, a local marketing whiz, began bottling the water in 1838. Yet despite his business acumen, until 1954 inexplicably the water was available only from pharmacies.

To begin with, of course, consumption of bottled natural mineral water, originally bottled in expensive glass or stoneware with porcelain or cork stoppers, was the privilege of the aristocracy and royalty. France’s yearly consumption of mineral water has been estimated at around 133 litres per person, or over three times that of wine. What’s more, France’s many mountains and volcanic areas provide the country with the ideal source of pure fresh waters, many of them bursting to the surface liberally laced with healthy doses of natural minerals.

The phrase ‘taking the waters’ has a rich and other-worldly air to it. Sadly, not everyone has time to indulge in the full spa indulgence, yet a mini-break at one of these places should give most of us a new insight into what is truly the ‘other’ French drink.

High in the Auvergne, France’s volcanic Massif Central region, we visit Vichy, a prominent spa town. “Ugh! Vichy is the worst!” says one French friend when we mention going there. She is not proved wrong.

Napoleon III, though, liked it enough to become a regular visitor in the 1860s, transporting his entire court and hangers-on from Paris for the summers. Another high-profile emperor was crazy for this stuff too. In fact, Julius Caesar built the first  health resort here over two thousand years ago.

The rather gentrified perception we’d had is blown away as we  approach the town over the wide and beautiful Allier River flanked by riverside apartments and esplanades, and discover tree-lined boulevards and sunny cafes overflowing with people relaxing outdoors.

Inside the ornate conservatory there are several options. Six waters are on offer, emerging at temperatures ranging up to 43.3C after their journeys through ancient mineral-rich rock, leaching calcium carbonate on the way. Some have a very strong rusty taste and a decidedly sulphurous odour. Several are said to have distinct health benegits, but I would have to be very sick, I decide, to pin my hopes on these.

The Célestins tap delivers cooler water, a little fizzy, with a flat slightly saline flavour. We like that one best, and fill our empty mineral water bottles.

Perhaps the major centre for waters which have become well-known commercially in France is the lovely, remote Auvergne region. Here in this Massif Central area, dotted by volcanic plugs and cones, and beloved by the French as a place to indulge in active outdoor sports – think hiking, kayaking and  climbing – there is the ideal après-exercise extra of hot springs and spa resorts.

Volvic, near the sprawling metropolis of Clermont-Ferrand, is a town built from the same grey volcanic stone which filters the water. Vichy is nearby and Badoit, closer to Lyon in the Rhône region, is not far away.

See more of this area....

The tasting room in the information centre at the bottling plant encourages us to try the new range of flavoured waters. This seems the craze now in France where we see gently fruit-flavoured versions appearing across many of the brands.

Here, the only place to fill a drink bottle is from a mossy fountain in the grounds......

........and the old baths are now locked off.

Finally, near Nimes in the south, at Perrier’s imposing visitor’s centre we are treated to a free trademark-green bottle of the ultra-fizzy mineral water, and drink it as we study the historical charts and displays.

Napoleon III also favoured this place. Soon it was called ‘Bouillens’ because of the way the water boiled out due to its high natural carbon gas content. In 1898 it became Perrier.

Outside, a green kiosk represents the ‘source’. Its well-like opening is filled with an arrangement of slim sinuously angled trumpet-like horns. From these we hear, amplified, a melodious glop-glug-plonk-splash. Does the famous water really make that musical sound as it arrives from the depths, we wonder?

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A short walk away, in an imposing chateau flanked by a tree clipped to resemble a Perrier bottle, the museum displays a faux-Egyptian frieze with slaves bearing Perrier-shaped bottles, seats from the French Open – and a roomful of glass display cases packed with Perrier-abilia.

We notice, though, that no-one attempts to explain those horns!

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– by Sally Hammond (Photography: Gordon Hammond)

Finding the waters:

Badoit: St Galmier, north of St-Etienne, Rhône-Alpes. 

Perrier: near Vèrgeze, between Nimes and Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon.

Vichy: Parc des Sources, Vichy, Auvergne.

Vittel: Thermes de Vittel, Vosges, Lorraine.

Volvic: near Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne.

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