Style and flavour
No reliable tasting notes for the original survive in the sources reviewed. A 2023 review of a modern recreation described a deep ruby wine with a medicinal, bitters-like aroma, a little cherry fruit and a dry, bitter finish; this describes the recreation, not the nineteenth-century product.
Key ingredients
- Red Bordeaux wine
- Coca leaf (infused)
History
Vin Mariani was created by Angelo Mariani, a Corsican-born chemist working in Paris, who steeped coca leaves in red Bordeaux wine. The alcohol in the wine extracted the active alkaloids from the leaf, so the drink delivered cocaine as well as alcohol. Most accounts date its creation to 1863, although the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History gives 1871. It was sold as a tonic for a long list of complaints, including fatigue, fevers and low spirits.
Mariani is remembered as a pioneer of celebrity marketing. He sent wine to well-known figures and collected their letters and portraits, publishing them in a long series of illustrated volumes known as the Album Mariani. Pope Leo XIII awarded the company a Vatican gold medal and allowed his image to appear in its advertising. Other endorsers named in museum and press sources include Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison, Jules Verne, Emile Zola, Sarah Bernhardt, Ulysses S. Grant and President William McKinley.
Vin Mariani was among the most successful coca tonics and inspired imitators. The best documented is the Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton, whose French Wine Coca of 1885 was reworked as a non-alcoholic drink when local prohibition arrived, and became Coca-Cola in 1886. Historians also trace how, in the United States, Vin Mariani's advertising shifted between about 1886 and 1910 from medicine towards an everyday drink.
The product declined as cocaine's harms became recognised and regulation tightened. The DEA Museum notes that the US Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 required ingredient labelling, after which most coca drinks, Vin Mariani included, were sold without cocaine. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act followed in 1914, the year Mariani died. Sources disagree on what happened next: some say the wine disappeared with him, while the Smithsonian states a decocainised version was sold into the 1960s. Since 2014 there have been modern recreations using coca leaf with the alkaloid removed, including a 22% ABV version from Babco Europe of County Dublin.
Culture
The Album Mariani and the posters Mariani commissioned from the Belle Epoque designer Jules Cheret are often cited as early examples of celebrity endorsement in advertising. Vin Mariani is frequently discussed as a forerunner of Coca-Cola.
How to serve
Historically it was drunk as a tonic or aperitif and, according to the Smithsonian, was popular as a cocktail with vermouth, bitters and a twist of lemon. The original is no longer made, and the cocaine-containing version would be illegal today. For more ideas, see our tonic wine recipes.