Apollinaris (water)

Apollinaris

Country	Germany/USA
Source	Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler
Type	sparkling
pH	5.8
Calcium (Ca)	90
Chloride (Cl−)	130
Bicarbonate (HCO3)	1800
Fluoride (Fl)	0.7
Magnesium (Mg)	120
Nitrate (NO3)	1.6
Potassium (K)	30
Sodium (Na)	470
Sulfates (SO)	100
TDS	1600
Website	apollinaris-gmbh.de
All values in milligrams per liter (mg/l)

Apollinaris is a German naturally sparkling mineral water, well known in German-speaking countries as "The Queen of Table Waters".

History

The spring was discovered by chance in 1852 in Georg Kreuzberg’s vineyard, in Bad Neuenahr, Germany. He named it after St Apollinaris of Ravenna, a patron saint of wine. The red triangle symbol and the slogan "The Queen of Table Waters" were adopted as trademarks in 1895. By 1913 the company was producing 40 million bottles a year, 90% of which were exported worldwide.

Today the source and the brand of Apollinaris belong to Coca-Cola, which acquired it from the multinational Cadbury-Schweppes in 2006.

Sports sponsorship

In the 1950s and 1960s, Apollinaris co-organised (with the Torck factories of Deinze, Belgium) the commercial beach games "Les Rois du Volant/De Koningen der Baan" on the Belgian coast.

Cultural references

The Jerome K. Jerome novel, Three Men on the Bummel (1900) contains a description of the product: “There is Apollinaris water which, I believe, with a little lemon squeezed into it, is practically harmless."

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1912) includes, in Chapter 9, the passage: "We supped and camped at the very edge of the cliff, quenching our thirst with two bottles of Apollinaris, which were in one of the cases."

In the UK and Ireland, Apollinaris was sold in small bottles, which were marketed as 'The Baby 'Polly'. The poem 'Sun and Fun' by Sir John Betjeman, published in 1954, includes the stanza:

I pulled aside the thick magenta curtains

- So Regency, so Regency, my dear -

And a host of little spiders

Ran a race across the ciders

To a box of baby 'pollies by the beer.

In the film American Psycho (2000), Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale, offers Detective Kimball (Willem Dafoe) a bottle of Apollinaris, which he politely tries to refuse. Bateman insists, also offering a lime.

In the story Counterparts in Dubliners by James Joyce it is also mentioned "Farrington stood a drink all round. Weathers said he would take a small Irish and Apollinaris. Farrington， who had definite notions of what was what， asked the boys would they have an Apollinaris too."

See also

• Mineral water
• Superior Taste Award
• Badoit
• Evian
• Farris
• Gerolsteiner Brunnen
• Panna
• Perrier
• Ramlösa
• Spa

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 edition of The Grocer's Encyclopedia.