It occurred to me that I've been meaning to check out SFist for a while now. Of course, I won't really be happy until we have an EastBayIst, but such is life. Scanning the front page, this graf jumped out at me. It's from an interview with new San Franciscan and author of Alcoholica Esoterica Ian Lendler:
When working on this book, did you fall in love with any new drinks?
Sadly, the one I really, really, really wanted to try is no longer around-– Vin Mariani, from the late 1800’s. It was bordeaux wine with cocaine leaves soaked in it. It was so good the Pope gave the inventor a Vatican medal of honor and officially endorsed the drink in an ad. I’ll type that again because it’s so awesome: The Pope! Did an ad! For cocaine wine! Because he drank it so much!Good times.
Whoa. This would appear to be the ad. This is Leo XIII we're talking about. He lived to be 93. I, uh. . .well, wow. What can you say?
