Vin Mariani
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Advertising bill for the wine Mariani, lithograph of Jules Cheret, 1894 |
Vin Mariani (
French:
Mariani's wine) was a
tonic created
circa 1863 by
Angelo Mariani, a chemist who became intrigued with
coca and its economic potential after reading
Paolo Mantegazza's paper on coca's effects. In 1863 Mariani started marketing a wine called Vin Mariani which was made from
Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves. The
ethanol in the wine acted as a solvent and extracted the
cocaine from the coca leaves, altering the drink's effect. It originally contained 6
mg of cocaine per
fluid ounce of wine, but Vin Mariani which was to be exported contained 7.2 mg per ounce in order to compete with the higher cocaine content of similar drinks in the United States.
This tonic was copied by
John S. Pemberton in 1884, originally as a
cocawine called
Pemberton's French Wine Coca. In 1885, when
Atlanta and
Fulton County passed
Prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing
Coca-Cola, essentially a carbonated,
non-alcoholic version of Mariani's wine with the addition of cola. The beverage was named Coca-Cola because originally, the
stimulant mixed in the beverage was
coca leaves from
South America. In addition, the drink was
flavored using
kola nuts, the beverage's source of
caffeine. Therefore, Angelo Mariani is sometimes thought of as the "grandfather of Coca-Cola."
When cocaine is administered on its own it yields two key active compounds,
benzoylecgonine and
ecgonine methyl ester. When combined with alcohol, as in Vin Mariani, the mixture forms a powerful psychoactive:
cocaethylene(which is both more euphorigenic and has higher cardiovascular toxicity than cocaine by itself).
Vin Mariani was very popular in its day, even among royalty such as
Queen Victoria of
Great Britain and Ireland.
Pope Leo XIII and later
Pope Saint Pius X were both Vin Mariani drinkers. Pope Leo awarded a
Vatican gold medal to the wine, and also appeared on a poster endorsing it.
