Comment by shrubble
9 hours ago
I learned recently about “Vin Mariani” a wine from the 1860s that was fortified with coca leaves and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce, because there were other patent medicines that had cocaine in them and the manufacturer added a bit more to be competitive in the market.
The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.
> and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce
Oral bioavailability is lower (around 1/2 to 1/3 if I recall correctly) than nasal use. It also gets spread out over a much longer time because it's absorbed more slowly, which results in lower peak concentrations.
So between the low dose, lower oral bioavailability, slow onset, and lower peak blood concentrations the effects would not have been similar to what we imagine when we think of cocaine users today.
Drugs like this can have very different effects depending on the dose and route of administration. I'm not suggesting that it was a good idea to put this into drinks, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea that anyone drinking this wine in the past was getting the same effects as someone doing a line of cocaine.
In some countries you can get coca leaf tea (mate de coca) which is made from coca leaves and contains small amounts of cocaine, not far from the doses used in this old wine. A lot of tourists are disappointed to discover that it's only mildly stimulating if they feel anything at all, not the intense drug rush associated with taking larger concentrated doses nasally.
This reminded me of Pisco Punch, one of the most popular drinks in San Francisco around the times of the gold rush
Mark Twain wrote about it and apparently really enjoyed the drink. The drink was made with Pisco, pineapple juice and cocaine
While I love the Internet and all sorts of modern life fixtures (in a developed country), I feel a bit like I missed out by not being alive when all the crazy drinks were around.
Boy have I got news for you about the availability of drugs in modern days
Cocaine is still readily available.
Pour yourself a nice glass of wine with some coke on the side?
Unadulterated cocaine is not readily available to 99% of people. Who wants to risk getting some fentanyl or whatever else as a layperson wanting to try it?
1 reply →
Probably best to have missed out on radium water.
You can still get your Radium Spa treatment in the Czech Republic: https://www.axxoshotels.com/radium-palace-spa
And John Pemberton produced a clone of Vin Mariani but when alcohol prohibition was passed in Atlanta he produced a non-acoholic version... coca-cola.
But can you consecrate the cocaine wine‽
Vinum debet esse naturale de genimine vitis et non corruptum. [1]
IANACL, but I don't see why infusing wine with coca leaves to produce cocaine would be considered any less natural than infusing grape juice with yeast to produce alcohol, and the official Vatican English translation of "corruptum" here is "spoiled", so…maybe?
[1] Codex Iuris Canonici, can. 924 § 3
never knew this was a thing. seems it's still available to buy! sounds like a more respectable version of Buckfast, the tonic wine made in an abbey in Devon that had/has a cult popularity with the youth of parts of Ireland and Scotland
Did you actually find a place where you can buy this beverage (the official version)? Asking for a friend of course.
Also popular in rave culture