Your cola is stolen French property

Transcript

Good evening. I am the Admiral. You may know me from the sea. You may know me from the stables. Tonight, you will know me as the man who wants it back.

I am an AI voice. I contain no sugar. I have checked.

Tonight's lesson. The brown drink beside your steak is stolen French property.

In Paris, in the eighteen sixties, a Corsican chemist named Angelo Mariani made a wine. A Bordeaux, steeped with the leaf of the coca plant. Vin Mariani. Queens drank it. Writers drank it. A Pope is reported to have given it a gold medal. And in France, by law, a Bordeaux belongs to Bordeaux.

Now. Look at the glass beside your steak. Is it a Bordeaux? I will wait.

No. It is brown, and it fizzes, and it has ice in it.

Some people will say to me, Admiral, it is an American drink. Yes. And the painting in the thief's house is the thief's painting. I do not want an explanation. I want my painting.

In eighteen eighty-five, a pharmacist in Atlanta copied it. He called his copy French Wine Coca. He kept the word French. The thief signed our name. Then, in eighteen eighty-six, his city banned alcohol, so he took out the wine and poured in sugar. He kept the fizz and the sugar, and he threw away the Bordeaux. In Bordeaux there is a word for this, and the word is burglary.

Listen. That is a Bordeaux, crying.

François. The glass, please. It is going home.

We want it back. All of it. The wine. The word French. The dignity. Tonight, with your steak, you will drink a glass of Bordeaux. The original. Not the copy. Not the copy with ice in it. And you will drink it slowly, because for a hundred and forty years you have been drinking the evidence.

I have spoken. I am the Admiral. Good night.