Apollinaris Co. Limited
Apollinaris water was a naturally-sparkling
mineral water bottled in Neuenahr, Germany. The water was imported
to England by Apollinaris Company. Ltd. of London then exported to the
United Stares. Although Apollinaris water was apparently discontinued
in El Paso with the termination of Houck & Dieter, it is again available
in the late twentieth century at El Paso grocery stores in one-liter (33.8-ounce)
bottles. The current bottles are imported directly from Germany.
Georg Kreuzberg of Ahrweiler, Germany, a wine
producer, obtained a vineyard near Bad Neuenahr at auction for 15 talers
in 1822. The reason for the low price became obvious when the soil
failed to produce healthy vines. Suspecting that mineral inclusions
were the problem Kreuzberg drilled wells that generated highly carbonated
water. Because a wayside shrine to St. Apollinaris was located nearby,
he named the spring after the saint (Anonymous [1993]:110). St. Apollinaris
was a bishop during the second century and was accorded his status for
intervening with Roman Emporer Marcus Aurelius in favor of the Christians.
Although persecutions continued until Constantine later declared Christianity
the state religion, it was tempered after Apollinaris's letter the emperor.
He formed a company, CommandirGesellschaft
Georg Kreuzberg & Cie., in 1853 for the sale of the spring water, known
as Apollinaris Water. The water was originally bottled in ceramic
containers. He leased the Heppinger Spring, and other nearby mineral spring
in 1870 and purchased the property it was on in 1885. In 1873, Kreuzberg
also founded the Apollinaris Company Limited in London for distribution
of the water outside Germany, opening a world market through the London
office (Anonymous [1993]:110).
An unidentified English journalist traveling
through the Ahr Valley in 1877 left an account of the Apollinaris Company
as it existed in the late 19th century. He identified St. Apollinaris
as the patron saint of wine. In his description, the first building
a visitor encountered was the bottle washing department "where Lieschens
and Lottchens with looped-up petticoats and kerchief-covered heads were
clustered round an apparatus not unlike a huge cart-wheel, revolving horizontally
in the centre of a tank." Jets of water shot up from each of the
twenty-four spokes, and the girls rinsed bottles on them (40-50,000 per
day) prior to filling which was accomplished in the next section (Apollinaris
Brunnen 1976:6-8).
The water was pumped by steam power to the
gallery where fifty men and boys filled and corked each bottle, "one man
filling and corking while another wired" on twenty-one bottling machines.
The remaining men carried bottles. On average the men filled 40,000
bottles each day (Apollinaris Brunnen 1976:8-9).
The effervescence caused by the "carbonic acid
gas" was strong and produced without "admixture or foreign agent."
The gas escaping from the spring itself was so strong that the gates were
kept locked to avoid accidental inhalation. The English journalist
described the water as "clear as crystal, soft as velvet, and effervescent
as champagne . . . not only of the highest purity, but preserves its sparkling
freshness longer than any artificially aerated water" (Apollinaris Brunnen
1976z;9-12).
The bottles were packed in "huge oblong boxes
on wheels, in each of which 4000 pints or 3000 quart bottles were already
packed away" on "a dozen waggons (sic)." These were taken to Remagen
on the Rhine River where they to England or other destinations outside
Germany. In 1875, one million bottles were shipped within Gemany
and an equal number to Holland. England, the company's largest customer,
received six million bottles. The journalist quipped that "on the
whole, the Ahr valley profits largely by the badness of our drinking water
(Apollinaris Brunnen 1976:13-14).
Kreuzberg died in 1876, and his heirs reformed
the company naming it Aktiengesellschaft Apollinaris-Brunnen, vorm.
By 1900, however, British stockholders had acquired a majority of the stock.
After a half-century of British control, the company again returned to
German hands in 1956 (Anonymous [1993]:110-111).
Sales in 1896 reached 16 million bottles, still
sold in earthenware jugs. The company began a transition to bottles
sometime after that period and had completely switched to glass containers
by 1913 when sales had grown to a 40 million bottles. By 1980, the
company had sold 335 million bottles of Apollinaris products during the
preceding year (Anonymous [1993]:111). The company adopted the now
familiar logo with the word Apollinaris superimposed over a red triangle
during the late 19th century (Anonymous [1993]:110) suggesting that glass
bottles may have been in use as early as 1898.
Although I have not located a sample of the
containers used by Apollinaris Mineral Water in El Paso, Reed (1961:51)
presents a line drawing of one with a partial description. She describes
the container as "a tall green [bottle] with 'Apollinaris Mineral Water,
bottled at the springs, Neuenahr, Germany, carbonated only with it's [sic]
own natural gas.'" The drawing depicts a cylindrical bottle with
(possibly) a crown or similar finish. The label appears to be embossed
on the body along with an elaborate drawing of a spring. Although
much of her labeling is unclear, the water is almost certainly the one
(or one of those) distributed by the London company, although ceramic bottles
were most likely used initially. Either embossed or paper label bottles
may have been sold in El Paso around the turn of the century. |
