My wife brings home things from the American supermarket with a little French flag on them and asks me if they are real. Usually they are not. I am building the list — every brand, three questions, one stamp. It starts with water. It will not stop at water. Each one is reviewed with the seriousness it deserves, which is to say: individually, and without mercy.
Three questions, asked in order, of every brand. 1. Is the company French? 2. Is the thing in the packet made in France? 3. And — the one nobody asks — do French people actually buy it? A brand can pass the first two and still fail the third. That will be most of the list.
Real, French, and actually in French kitchens and bathrooms. Buy it without thinking.
A genuine French brand — but the version sold in America is a different product. Same label, different thing in the jar.
French, yes. Special, no. Invented by a marketing department, or ordinary at home and prestigious abroad.
Wearing the flag as a costume. Not French, or French only as an address on the label.
Every verdict, in one place — groceries, drinks, pharmacy and skincare, the house, restaurants, hotels. We are starting with water and working outward. Judged so far: 3.
Nothing in that yet. He is considering it.
This is the one that is actually in French houses. Not on the table at a restaurant — in the garage, in a crate, in the fridge door. It is classed as spring water rather than mineral water and it is the cheapest thing on the shelf, and it is still what the country drinks. Nobody is romantic about Cristaline. That is the compliment.
French company · bottled in France, at more than twenty regional springs · the best-selling still water in France · verified August 2026
Filtered through volcanic rock in the Auvergne and light enough that French parents give it to babies. Low in minerals, which in France is a specification and not an absence. It says on the label exactly what is in it, because by law it must, and because it may not be changed.
French company · bottled at the source in Puy-de-Dôme · ordinary in French kitchens · verified August 2026
The ambassador. Americans think it is what France drinks, which is not quite it — France drinks Cristaline and serves Evian. But the bottle is honest: one spring above Lake Geneva, 345 milligrams of minerals per litre, and nothing added, because nothing is permitted to be added. It is the real thing. It is simply not the everyday thing.
French company · bottled at the Cachat spring, Évian-les-Bains · genuinely drunk in France · verified August 2026
Dasani, Poland Spring and Fiji were in the same glasses and receive no verdict. None of them has ever claimed to be French. There is nothing to judge.
The seal is not for sale. No brand will pay to appear, and none will be consulted first. The moment a verdict can be bought, the whole page is worth nothing — and everyone can smell it anyway.
Sources & dates. Every ownership and manufacturing claim will be checked against company filings, press releases, court records and regulators, and dated. Where something is disputed, it will say so instead of guessing. Corrections will be welcome, and published.
The library opens with water · more in deliberation