If you mean the bottles handed out from the Shimano (formerly Mavic) neutral service cars at the Tour de France, they are essentially standard cycling bidons filled with plain water, not special branded “magic” drinks.
What those neutral service bottles actually are
Neutral service exists to give any rider basic support when their own team car is not nearby, so the focus is on safety and neutrality rather than custom nutrition or team branding. The bottles they pass up are:
- Standard plastic cycling bottles (bidons), similar in size and shape to what pros normally use.
- Typically filled with plain water rather than carbohydrate drink mix or other additives, for two reasons: they must be safe for any rider to grab without worrying about unknown ingredients, and water is universally acceptable.
- Marked in a neutral brand style (Mavic yellow in the past, Shimano blue now), not in team livery, because the service is meant to be independent of any one team or sponsor.
Riders still rely mainly on their own team cars for their preferred energy drinks and carefully measured mixes, so they usually treat neutral bottles as an emergency top‑up rather than their main source of fuel.
Why the bottles have to be “neutral”
There’s a long history of riders being wary of accepting drinks from random fans on the roadside because of contamination fears and anti‑doping rules. Neutral service bottles solve that problem: the cars are officially part of the race convoy, and bottles from them are understood to be simple, “no‑dope” water from a trusted source, not improvised concoctions. Because the neutral cars support every team equally, they cannot be tied to one squad’s sponsor or nutrition program. That’s why you won’t see, for example, an Ineos‑branded bottle coming out of a Shimano neutral car; you’ll see a plain or Shimano‑branded one that any rider can use without crossing sponsor lines.
How this fits into the wider bottle chaos at the Tour
It’s also worth separating a few different kinds of bottles you might see:
- Team bottles from team cars: where riders get their personalized mixes, electrolytes, and high‑carb drinks.
- Neutral service bottles: generic, neutral-brand bottles with plain water for emergencies or when a rider is isolated.
- Publicity caravan bottles: brands like Vittel hand out millions of free bottles to spectators before the race reaches them; these are just regular commercial mineral water bottles aimed at fans, not riders.
So if you’re watching on TV and see the blue Shimano neutral car hand a rider a bottle, you can assume it’s a standard bidon of plain water, designed first and foremost to be safe, neutral and universally acceptable in the middle of the race.