Vin Mariani

Vin Mariani
Advertising bill for the wine Mariani, lithograph of Jules Chéret, 1894
TypeCoca wine
Introduced1863; 161 years ago (1863)
Related productsCoca-Cola

Vin Mariani (French: Mariani wine) was a coca wine and patent medicine created in the 1860s by Angelo Mariani, a French chemist from the island of Corsica. Mariani became intrigued with coca and its medical and economic potential after reading Paolo Mantegazza's paper on the effects of coca. Between 1863 and 1868[1][2] Mariani started marketing a coca wine called Vin Tonique Mariani (à la Coca du Pérou)[1] which was made from Bordeaux wine and coca leaves.[3]

The ethanol in the wine acted as a solvent and extracted the cocaine from the coca leaves. It originally contained 6 mg of cocaine per fluid ounce of wine (211.2 mg/L),[4] but Vin Mariani that was to be exported contained 7.2 mg per ounce (253.4 mg/L), in order to compete with the higher cocaine content of similar drinks in the United States. Advertisements for Vin Mariani claimed that it would restore health, strength, energy and vitality.

  1. ^ a b "Angelo Mariani – Man Behind The Bottle – Discover". Exposition Universelle des Vins et Spiritueux.
  2. ^ Karch, Steven B. (2006). A Brief History of Cocaine (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, Florida: Taylor & Francis Group. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-8493-9775-2. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  3. ^ Inciardi, James A. (1992). The War on Drugs II. Mayfield Publishing Company. p. 6. ISBN 1-55934-016-9.
  4. ^ Karch 2006, p. 118.