At Fawlty Towers we all knew the rules. Don’t mention the war. Well, its a similar story at the Perrier plant in Vergèze, situated near Nimes in the Languedoc region of southern France. Although there the unmentionable is nothing more than a date - February 1990, to be precise. For it was then the minute traces of poisonous chemicals were detected in bottles of Perrier water in the United States. And well, eau la la, things have never been quite the same since.

The French Prime Minister Michel Rocard went on national television and publicly downed vast quantities of the world’s most popular sparkling water in an attempt to diffuse the crisis and reassure the public - much as John Major once found himself tucking into sirloin steaks and hamburgers at an alarming rate at the height of the BSG crisis. But in both cases it was too little, too late. Carefully sizing up its wounded adversary it was not too long before the multi-national Nestlé moved in for the kill, buying out the entire Perrier plant before any of its green bottles had been put back up on the wall.

"Its not for me to comment on", Roland Chazal, the new Vergèze chief muses. "But let’s say that with hindsight it probably wasn’t a very wise decision to recall a billion of our bottles worldwide. That meant that supermarket shelves were empty for some 3 to 4 months whilst waiting for fresh supplies to arrive, which in turn meant that our competitors snapped up the new opportunity. I’m a little reluctant to criticize the old management team - but let’s say that there might well have been other, more sensible options."

Seven years down the line Perrier has still failed to recapture its market share; ‘steady progress’, Chazal explains, but nothing to write home about. Still, spring water (mountains? - there are none) combined with carbonic gas (volcanoes? - none to be seen) continues to gush at the Source Perrier just as it has done through the centuries. Situated in the heart of what was once Narbonne Gaul, Vergèze lay on the route from Rome to Spain, ancient records revealing that Caesar’s Roman troops would stop to drink there. The story then leaps forward almost two millennia when a certain Dr. Louis Perrier from Nimes acquired the site in 1898. Perfecting a new bottling technique, he began to look around for an associate able to finance the venture. Step forward Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere, proprietors of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph respectively. Harmsworth saw great potential for the site once known as Les Bouillens, ‘the bubbling waters’. He bought shares in the property and christened the spring after the dedicated physician who first brought it to his attention. Though confined to a wheelchair after a car accident, he remained keen on sport, the Indian clubs he exercised with in his gymnasium providing the idea for the distinctive shape of the Perrier bottle.

Mindful of his fellow countrymen, an dedicated to the notion of empire, Harmsworth saw to it that civil servants and military personnel posted to the four corners of the earth had a constant supply of uncontaminated water to mix with whisky, Perrier thus becoming better known in Delhi and Darjeeling than the French capital itself. When Harmsworth died in 1933 he asked for his ashes to be cast over the Channel, a symbolic gesture signifying that France was his second home.

Things have never been quite so cozy ever since. Back in French hands after the second world war, the company embarked upon a huge expansion programme, building vast new plants and glassworks capable of producing up to 130 million bottles, a quarter of them for exportation. Visit the glassworks today and you will see a magnificent sight of molten blobs of orange glass being cut off by giant pairs of crab-like scissors, 120,000 bottles being churned out 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The cooled glass is then press-flattened, the bottle blown, before being sent in a steady stream to an annealing tunnel. Before long you have the distinct impression of being surrounded by vast green snakes, rattle snakes to be precise, as the newly-formed bottles head off to meet their sparkling new tenants.

Despite its financial woes, the statistics continue to impress: 99 lorries setting off each and every day; 25 trains do likewise; 140 countries still serve the drink daily. The whole story, Chazan will tell you, is fou. Crazy perhaps, but with dynamic firms such as Badois snapping at Perrier’s bottle-tops, the whole management team knows that variety and momentum are the keys to long-term economic success and stability. Which in turn means problems with the all-powerful French trade union the C.G.T., desperate to protect jobs in a country with the highest rate of unemployment in Europe. He wouldn’t dare say so, of course, but you don’t need a Ph.D in psychology to tell that he is a secret admirer of the union-bashing dame de fer.

With its usual slick advertising, Perrier launched its long-awaited new product in June of last year. Its called FU - and, panic not - it will be launched internationally later this year. And guess what? Its 89% Perrier, with sugar, citric acid, natural aromas and vegetable extracts thrown in. Tasted like a mixture of Tizer and Lucazade to me - but its apparently going down a treat in France and Chazal is optimistic about its wider appeal in the market as un soft drink in its own right.

Down but most certainly not out, then, is the message from Vergèze. Keenly aware that the company cannot afford a second poisoning scare, Perrier is now doing everything possible to ensure that protection of the environment is at the very top of its agenda, the whole ethos of the company now as green as its celebrated bottles.

"Millions more green bottles", Chazan chortles, "and none of them shall fall."