Vin Tonique Mariani, or just the Mariani Wine is a tonic wine with Coca leaf extract, which appeared in 1863 and in a short time has become an international hit. Among his many imitators was the inventor of Coca-Cola.

It was invented by a French chemist, born in Corsica, Angelo Mariani (Angelo Mariani) under the impression from research by Italian doctor Paolo Mantegazza of alleged beneficial properties of the Coca Bush. These works led him to the idea to combine the extract of Coca leaves with red Bordeaux wine in the proportion of 6 mg of Coca per ounce of wine – thus was born the wine Mariani.

The recommended dose was considered to be 2-3 glasses a day, which should be used before or after a meal (for children less than half). The wine was marketed as a digestive, appetizer and General tonic.

This wonderful drink was attributed to the ability to cure almost all ailments and boost energy, so necessary to the creative people and simple hard workers.

Mariani wine was a real hit. First, super-tonic wine with Coca stormed his home town – Paris and then the rest of Europe and the United States. In an effort to gain a foothold in the new territories, Mariani opened offices in London, new York and Montreal. To maintain demand for its product in the United States, he opened a second laboratory in new York.

The wine Mariani had many competitors and imitators, but thanks to a successful advertising campaign with the involvement of celebrities, he was able to sell his wine for millions of dollars.

Advertising campaign rests on the fact that Mariani wine is endorsed by doctors, but the real driver of sales were the recommendations of celebrities, which it is was not considered: politicians, actors, writers, religious leaders – one and all praised the magic elixir.

Among fans of the drink was: Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola, presidents William McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant, numerous monarchs, including the British Queen Victoria. And on the advertising posters you could see Sarah Bernhardt and Pope Leo XIII, who even gave Mariani a gold medal!

Medical advice and praise celebrities

Mariani announces receiving the gold medal from Pope Leo XIII

For that gold medal? The answer to that gives us another advertisement. It says that Dad was a sincere admirer of the drink: “His Holiness writes that to fully appreciate the positive effects of this tonic wine and as a token of appreciation, reports Mr. Mariani a gold medal with his image”.

Competition erupted…

There were so many imitators, often with a lower quality product that, at the turn of the century Mariani has released this advertisement in a medical publication The Medical And Surgical Reporter :

“It is IMPORTANT

Health workers

Common complaints from doctors and patients, associated with disappointing and disturbing results of imitations and substitutes (the so-called “Coca Wine”), encourage us to respectfully ask the doctors that want to prescribe our wine, to indicate to the patient the need to take it, and only the Wine Mariani “

Angelo Mariani died in 1914, a few months before the outbreak of the First World.
By this time his product was already surrounded by many enemies, both in the US and around the world:

• Act 1906 about the purity of food and drugs – the law regulating the labeling of products containing cocaine and heroin were, in theory, to bring down the tone of the ads Mariani in part magical health benefits and mention Coca leaf. But Mariani seems to handle it: somewhere in open defiance of the law and its supporters, somewhere stating the lack of cocaine in their wines.
• Doctors of the time had published articles in medical journals, indicating that Mariani, in fact, produced fortified wine at his new York laboratory: the claimed 10% of the fortress turned into the actual 16% or higher – due to the dilution of the added Coca pure alcohol. This provoked fierce disputes with the ROC on the legality of labelling the wine Mariani as “French”, while it actually is prepared in the laboratory as a cocktail with cocaine. And if the label on the product is lying, its sales should not be banned, concluded the officials. Obviously, these attacks were rebuffed because the hype was hushed up pretty quickly. And only a recent study of the wine Mariani sample 1982 conducted in the canadian laboratory, with the help of magnetic resonance scan confirmed that Mariani is really fastened their wines.
• The anti-alcohol campaign that swept the world, has greatly reduced the market for this product.
• The growing worldwide concern that cocaine, previously thought in the medical community miracle cure, in practice, turns out to be a dangerous drug, is far from a panacea, has led to the adoption in the United States, Harrison law on the tax on drugs in 1914.
  This law took tight rein the market of narcotic products.

According to some estimates, Mariani withstood the onslaught of the regulators in the United States until 1910. In his later campaigns were glowing the same celebrity as before, only “indications for use” have become more restrained (but still not devoid of rave shades).

At the same time, Mariani earned on its fault status (few years ago the new York times called him “probably the world’s first cocaine millionaire”), one of his competitors continued the business, becoming a manufacturer of the world-famous soda. So the story of the rise and fall of the wine Mariani made an ironic plot twist.

Among wine snobs have a favorite bike, probably not devoid of truth in this. Its essence is as follows.

10 years ago, rich Chinese businessmen began to buy up the most expensive wines of Bordeaux farms, creating a high demand and inflated prices for them. They bought a good wine to show wealth or as a business gift at the closing of major deals. At the same time, the taste of the wine they don’t particularly like them, so they drank it with Coca-Cola (Oh, my God, what a Terribl!).

This is what we… Drink wine with Cola? Drink, of course. This is called the cocktail of Calimocho (bask. Kalimotxo)

Would someone in their right mind mixing Chateau Lafite Rothschild or château Margaux with Coca-Cola? Of course not.

Well, anyone ever pulled the money down the toilet like that? And then! Have you seen what they do with expensive champagne in the Lounges Nightclubs?

What does all this have to do with guilt Mariani?

As we mentioned, it was one of the very numerous soft drinks the West at that time. One of the us simulators Mariani was a John Pemberton (John S. Pemberton) , a pharmacist living in Atlanta. French Coca-Wine Pemberton appeared on the market in 1885, did not have time to gain large popularity. It was an alcoholic beverage, but the exact origin of the wine from which it was made, is not known.

Literally a year of the appearance of this wine, the state government announced that starting next year, alcohol would be outlawed. Pemberton was forced to remove him from his drink. Changing the recipe he dubbed its new product Coca-Cola…

And so, if we take this story over the truth, after more than 125 years, Coca-Cola Pemberton (without coke) has finally connected with the best wine from Bordeaux.