Bubbly on draught

When King Francis I of France met King Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, the two fountains outside the castle of Guînes flowed with wine. Today drinking fountains in each of the 20 arrondissements of Paris flow with sparkling water. True, it is no new opinion that water is best. That was a motto of Pindar 2,500 years ago, and the words in Greek letters of gold are set over the Pump Room in Bath. But Pindar didn’t specify still or sparkling. The aim of the company that supplies the water of Paris may be sound: to wean the people of the city off the 128 litres a year of bottled water each gets through. But somehow pétillante seems an over-fussy demand when drinking from a public fountain. It’s as though the atmosphere in an air-conditioned room were scented as well as cooled.