Comment by Aurornis

> 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.