A spa town, two partners and a change of name.

Peñafiel comes from Tehuacán, a city in the Mexican state of Puebla that, English Wikipedia says, was already known for its mineral springs in the late nineteenth century. Peñafiel draws its water from wells there, and English Wikipedia describes the Peñafiel and Garci Crespo springs as the source of the mineral water known as “agua Tehuacán.”

The company tells its own story in a dated history published by Grupo Peñafiel in 2008. In June 1928, it says, José María Garci Crespo de la Vega and Carlos Silva founded Manantiales de Tehuacán, S.A., to bottle mineral water and distribute it across Mexico. In November 1937 the business was renamed Manantiales Garci Crespo, S.A., and two years later it opened its first distribution centre in the Valley of Mexico, around the capital. Dr Pepper Snapple Group, a later owner, said in 2010 that the water was first bottled in San Nicolás Tetitzintla and that within little more than a decade the brand had spread from its local beginnings to the rest of the country.

The Peñafiel name arrived in 1948. That year, the company says, Garci Crespo left the partnership and the business became Manantiales Peñafiel, S.A. The company explains the name as a play on two Spanish words: peña, the rock that holds back the underground currents and makes the springs rise, and fiel, faithful, because that rock had stood fixed and immovable for many years while the water kept flowing. The company says the water begins as snowmelt on the Pico de Orizaba, or Citlaltépetl, Mexico’s highest peak, and picks up mineral salts on a long underground journey through the region’s limestone. The same word is also a place name in Spain, where Peñafiel is a town in the province of Valladolid known for its castle, but the Mexican company ties its brand to the rock.

Mineral water, then fruit flavours.

In the early 2000s its Mexican website described it as a natural spring mineral water and pitched it at young adults who wanted to relax. The brand grew after its sale to a multinational in 1992: Cadbury Schweppes, English Wikipedia says, rolled out line extensions and new packaging.

The best-known of those extensions arrived in the 2000s. In August 2003 the company launched Peñafiel Twist, a range of fruit-flavoured mineral waters, followed in April 2004 by Peñafiel Naturel, a flavoured range made without artificial sweeteners, according to Dr Pepper Snapple Group’s brand page of 2010. That page listed Naturel in orange, lemon, strawberry, grapefruit and apple. English Wikipedia lists a wider set of flavours, from cranberry and coconut water to mango, pineapple and a sangría, and names the current presentations Naturel, Twist and Classic.

Peñafiel also gave its name to a larger business. Under Cadbury Schweppes the Mexican company bottled and sold other drinks, and its own history lists the brands it added: A&W, Squirt and Vernor’s in 1993 and Crystal Light, Orange Crush, Dr Pepper and 7up in 1995. By 2010 Grupo Peñafiel said it ran four plants and 22 distribution centres in Mexico and worked with 13 bottling groups. Keurig Dr Pepper today counts Peñafiel among its key brands in Mexico, alongside Dr Pepper, Canada Dry, Mott’s and Clamato, English Wikipedia says.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all drink names from France and Mexico: Orangina, Vittel, Teisseire, Peñafiel, Boing!, Sidral Mundet and Tecate. French and Mexican drink brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food and drink groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a bottle, a can, a name and the moment of drinking it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Monterrey to Cadbury Schweppes to Keurig Dr Pepper.

Peñafiel has changed hands several times since 1980. In 1980, the company says, it was bought by Valores Industriales, S.A., a group from Monterrey, which reorganised the business. In 1992 it was bought by the British group Cadbury Schweppes, and the Mexican company took the name Cadbury Schweppes Bebidas México.

On 7 May 2008 Cadbury Schweppes separated its drinks business from its confectionery. The drinks side became Dr Pepper Snapple Group, an independent company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and in Mexico the business took the name of its leading brand, Grupo Peñafiel, the company says. Dr Pepper Snapple Group, then based in Plano, Texas, described itself in 2010 as marketing more than 50 drinks brands across North America. On 9 July 2018 Dr Pepper Snapple Group merged with Keurig Green Mountain to form Keurig Dr Pepper, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Frisco, Texas, English Wikipedia says; it lists Grupo Peñafiel as a subsidiary and says the group’s international operations are concentrated in Canada and Mexico.

A further change is planned. In August 2025 Keurig Dr Pepper agreed to buy the Dutch coffee company JDE Peet’s and said it would then split into two US-listed companies, one for coffee and one for refreshment beverages, The New York Times reported. In April 2026, Reuters reported, the company named Tim Cofer to lead the drinks business, called Beverage Co.

For a design guide, Peñafiel shows how a spring, a town and a story about a faithful rock can carry a mineral water through a chain of owners and into fruit flavours. Compare Jumex, the Mexican juice maker, and Sidral Mundet, the Mexican apple soda. For this guide we use a Tehuacán blue, a spring blue and a lime with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Peñafiel’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.