Three generations of Rickers on a Maine hillside.

Poland Spring takes its name from a hillside spring in Poland, Maine, and from the family that kept an inn beside it. The Poland Spring Preservation Society’s timeline says Jabez Ricker moved his family to Bakerstown, the settlement now called Poland, in 1794, and that the Wentworth Ricker Inn, later known as the Mansion House, opened in 1797. In 1834 the inn passed to Hiram Ricker, whom the society calls the founder of Poland Spring Water.

The brand dates itself to 1845, the year English Wikipedia gives for its introduction and the year the society says Hiram began sharing water from the spring with neighbours and nearby communities. Commercial sales of what was then called “Poland Water” followed in 1859, according to both the society and English Wikipedia. English Wikipedia says the inn was enlarged and renamed the Mansion House in 1861, and that the family began bottling the water soon after.

The business stayed in the family for three generations. In 1869, the society says, Hiram handed leadership to his eldest son, Edward P. Ricker; in 1875 another son, Alvan B. Ricker, joined, and the firm became Hiram Ricker and Sons. On 4 July 1876 the family opened the Poland Spring House, a summer hotel on Ricker Hill which, English Wikipedia says, locals nicknamed “Ricker’s Folly.” A resort still operates on the site today.

A collector’s bottle, a world’s-fair building and a green label.

The brand’s best-known early object is a bottle. The society’s timeline says a glass bottle known as the Moses bottle was made in 1876 to mark the opening of the Poland Spring House, and that it is now a prized collector’s item; in 1933, it adds, the Ricker business licensed the Moses bottle to a gin company.

The resort also collected architecture. Poland Water was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and received a medal there, the society says. After the fair the family bought the Maine State Building, the state’s octagonal pavilion, and in 1894 had it moved to the resort, where it was dedicated in 1895 as a library, museum and art gallery. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and in 2011 became home to the Maine Golf Hall of Fame, according to the society. A new springhouse and bottling facility followed in 1907.

The hotel did not survive. The society says the business was reorganised in 1937 under Judge Fred Lancaster after years of debt and succession problems, and that the property changed hands several times until 1962; English Wikipedia says the Ricker family had lost control in the 1930s. The Poland Spring House was destroyed by fire on 3 July 1975, and the Poland Spring Preservation Society was formed the following year.

The packaging has kept changing with the plastic bottle. English Wikipedia says that by November 2007 the company had moved to a lighter “Eco-Shape” bottle, which it said used 30 percent less plastic. In September 2026 The Dieline reported a refresh of the Poland Spring Sparkling range by the agency Interact: oversized fruit gave way to rolling hills, pine forests and a winding blue spring inspired by national-park and travel posters, skies in lime, yellow, pink and purple tell the flavours apart, and the brand’s signature green was kept.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all bottled water names: Acqua Panna, Highland Spring, smartwater, San Benedetto, Poland Spring, Essentia and Buxton. Bottled water brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family companies that still run their own springs to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant table.

A bottled water brand’s identity is usually carried less by the water itself than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, added new sources 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 water is actually sourced and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its water is sourced and bottled and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Perrier and Nestlé to BlueTriton and Primo Brands.

The modern brand has belonged to a succession of larger companies. The society’s timeline records a sale to Perrier in 1973, a sale to Paul den Haene in 1977 and a return to Perrier in 1980; English Wikipedia gives 1980 as the year the Perrier Water Company bought Poland Spring. Nestlé acquired the brand in 1992 when it took over Perrier, and Poland Spring became part of Nestlé Waters North America.

In February 2021 Nestlé announced the sale of its North American water brands, Poland Spring among them, to the private-equity firms One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co.; after the deal closed later that year, Nestlé Waters North America was renamed BlueTriton Brands, English Wikipedia says. BlueTriton’s merger with Primo Water was announced in June 2024 and completed on 8 November 2024, creating Primo Brands, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The water is bottled at a plant in Poland Spring, Maine, and English Wikipedia names sources across the state, including springs in Poland, Hollis, Fryeburg, Kingfield and Denmark.

The word “spring” itself has been argued in court. A class action filed in federal court in Connecticut in August 2017 alleges that the water does not meet the federal definition of spring water; in December 2024 Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer declined to dismiss most of the remaining claims, Reuters reported, and Primo Brands said it was confident that its Maine springs comply with the federal rule.

For a design guide, Poland Spring shows how a nineteenth-century resort name, a spring and a signature green can carry a bottled-water brand through a long line of owners. Its lettering is covered in our guide What Font Does Poland Spring Use? Compare Highland Spring, the Perthshire spring water, and Vittel, the Vosges spa water. For this guide we use spring green, pine and spring blue with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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