PUBLIC MARKS from sbrothier with tags drink & advertising

Tonico Pepto Cocaina Gibson, para tener buena salud hay que digerir bien

Today we have a cocaine problem in our country. This problem is no newcomer to the American scene. At the turn of the century, coca was added to many over-the-counter products. It was widely advertised and freely available at the local drug store. Indeed there were groups who warned of its effects and fought against its use but the population at large with easy access and probably little understanding continued using the these tonics and stimulants often to the point of addiction. At least some of the time the public was not aware of the addition of cocaine as one of the ingredients. Of all the coca products none was more flagrant in their advertising or more successful in their sales than Coca Mariani, a dangerous combination of wine and coca extract. The "Popular French Tonic," as it was called was billed as a "Tonic Stimulant" and they claim was used in Hospitals, Public and Religious Institutions.

"never has anything been so highly or justly praised.” A good 20 years before the original cocaine-infused Coca-Cola taught the world to grind its teeth and give ineffectual bathroom-stall handjobs in per•fect har•mo•ny, there was another drink of choice among those wishing to feel invigorated and overconfident for no good reason. It was called “coca wine” and it was loved not only by self-important blowhards wearing too much jewelry but by Kings and Popes and… oh, right. Anyhow, it was called Vin Tonique Mariani (or simply Vin Mariani) was sold as a curative, and in the latter half of the 19th century it was a medicinal, recreational, and marketing powerhouse. To paraphrase J.J. Cale “Czars don’t lie, Popes don’t lie, Queens don’t lie...”

Réclame pour le vin Mariani. Dessin et dédicace de Léon Comerre "Toute sa vie, O Mariani ! Il chantera ton vin béni" Extraite de "Figures Contemporaines", Tome 8. Angelo Mariani (1838-1914) développa en 1863 une boisson tonique, composée à partir de vin de Bordeaux et d'extrait de feuilles de coca, commercialisée à l'époque sous le nom de vin Mariani. Ce fut un succès énorme qui lui valut la célébrité dans toute l'Europe. Il sut confier la publicité de son vin aux plus grandes célébrités, notamment littéraires, auxquelles il consacra un reccueil biographique publicitaire : "Figures Contemporaines" en 1894. Par la suite, une quinzaine de volumes furent publiés au rythme de un par an. [1]

The original name for this drink was apparently the Suffering Bar Steward, but as one might expect in a noisy bar after a few drinks, the name gets a little mangled. There are several recipes for this floating about. For mine I turned to one of my favorite sources, Beachbum Berrry's Grog Log, by Jeff Berry.