Skip to main content

That Time Coca-Cola Started as a Wine Cocaine Cocktail

 Heyo! Happy Monday! This week's subject is the origin of my favorite soda. I sold my soul to the Coca-Cola company in 2009 and I haven't looked back since.

An advertisement for Pemberton's French Wine Coca

First, we have to start at the beginning and talk about Coca Wine, which is a wine and cocaine cocktail that was VERY popular. The cocktail was developed in 1863 by Angelo Mariani, who made his Vin Mariani branded coca wine from Peruvian coca leaves and Bordeaux wine. It was all the rage to the point that Pope Leo XIII endorsed it, was sort of a spokesperson for Vin Mariani, and even gave it the Vatican gold medal. I had no idea the Vatigan gold medal was even a thing until I started researching for this post. They had Popes endorsing cocaine wine and we have a Pope saying slurs.

NOW that you've got some basic background about the cocaine wine cocktail, let's talk about how it relates to Coca-Cola. In the 1880s, John Pemberton created Pemberton's French Wine Coca, inspired by Vin Mariani. Pemberton was a pharmacist in Georgia. He created Wine Coca not just because he wanted to capitalize off of the success of Vin Mariani, but also because he was in search of his own remedy. Pemberton was injured in the Civil War and it led to him becoming a morphine addict.

John Pemberton
An 1885 interview with the Atlanta Journal quotes Pemberton as claiming that his French Wine Coca would benefit those "devoted to extreme mental exertion. He marked it as a cure-all. The list of things it could cure was morphine addiction, physical exhaustion, constipation, headache, impotence, and many more. With the 1885 passing of the temperance legislation - a precursor to prohibition - Pemberton developed a non-alcoholic version by replacing the wine with syrup and adding carbonation. That is the drink that would become our beloved Coca-Cola. However, the production of Pemberton's French Wine Coca continued until his death in 1888. Reportedly, in the last year of production, 720 bottles of Pemberton's French Wine Coca were sold daily.

Today, Coca-Cola no longer has alcohol nor cocaine in it and is one of the most popular drinks in the world.

If you enjoyed learning about this weird time in history, please check out my other That Time... posts! And if you have any other weird moments in history that interest you, drop them in the comments! I'm always looking for new things to learn and write about. Have a great week!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zac Efron and Garrett Clayton are Basically the Same Person

I, a 21-year-old adult, is still a HUGE fan of the High School Musical franchise. In high school, had I been a better planner, I would have asked Lucas Grabeel to be my prom date. And even though I was older than most viewers, I did love Teen Beach Movie when it came out. In this post, I am going to explain how Zac Efron and Garrett Clayton are basically the same person. Let's start at the beginning. You may know Zac Efron as Troy Bolton in the Disney Channel Original Movie (or DCOM), High School Musical and it's franchise. He is the attractive blue-eyed, protagonist of all three HSM movies. And I will admit that I was a huge fangirl for him in my youth. Honestly, now I can't stand him. But that's for another post. Zac portrayed Troy in all three HSM films, but he only sang in the last two. That's right. Zac Efron did not sing in the first HSM movie. That was the amazingly talented Drew Seeley whom I will love till the day I die. Similarly, Garrett Clayton pl
1 comment
Read more

Is Marvin from Falsettos Abusive? And Why is He Such an Easy Character to Hate?

Is Marvin abusive? Short answer: yes. Long answer: You've come to the right place. "I love my tight-knit family. I love the way they cook linguine." Let's get this out of the way, this blog, as all of my blog posts are, is 100% my opinion. Unless stated directly that it is fact, this is all what's going on in my mind. Thoughts from a fangirl, if you will. Also I have to use Spotify to link the songs, because the entire 2016 revival cast album is not on YouTube and I know the revival album better than the original albums. Also this post is going to be long because I'm actually going through actual lines from the musical. I am going to try to sprinkle some photos into this post. "Lovers come and lovers go." Listen to "Marvin Hits Trina" on Spotify. Let's start with the most obvious: Marvin hits Trina after learning that she's going to marry Mendel. Where can you find this scene? In "Marvin Hits Trina". It'
6 comments
Read more

That Time A President Conducted Meetings from the Toilet

Happy Monday! Another week ahead. This week's weird moment from history is how President Lyndon B. Johnson conducted meetings and interviews while on the toilet. I learned way too much about LBJ while doing research for this post and it is going to be a LONG time before I write another weird history post about him. But there will be at least another one in the future. Man was weird. Quick history lesson for my non-Americans who may not know who LBJ is. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States. He assumed the position following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He was president from 1963 til 1969. NOW if you're like me and you grew up with the rewatching the movie Forrest Gump over and over again your first introduction to LBJ might be when Forrest was being honored with the Medal of Honor and showed the president where he was "shot in the buttocks" during the Vietnam War.  I haven't watched Forrest Gump in years, but if you haven't
Post a Comment
Read more