One bottle of real Vietnamese Snake Wine.
$2000 pesos ($100 US).
I bought this in 2002 after watching This episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “A Cook’s Tour.”
Season 1, Episode 3.
Cobra Heart-Food That Makes You Manly
After taking a cyclo ride through Ho Chi Minh City and trying various foods from roadside vendors and markets, Tony enjoys a unique dining atmosphere where sizzling hot rice cakes fly overhead. Later, Tony tests his might with a few shots of snake wine and a live cobra heart.
(I figure that the Vietnamese might have thought that US men might need being “made manly” since they had to run out of Vietnam with their tales between their legs after the Vietnamese War. – ed note)
Sarah and I had been together not very long and she was watching this show and called me into the tv room to see this episode because she had already sensed that I might be a tad strange.
I rushed to my computer and bought 2 bottles on ebay. So this bottle is “aged.” The second bottle that I bought I keep for myself since I often have the need to be “made manly.”
This “wine” is purported to have many medicinal properties in Oriental medicine, not the least of which is male sexual enhancement.
LEGALITY & REALITY
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service previously had chances to check what they call an unusual cocktail, some Snake wine bottles, and didn’t find anything to complain about, because the Snakes are not endangered species on the CITES list (convention on international trade in endangered species) which applies to live and dead animals.
The snake which looks like a “Cobra” in Snake Wine in fact is a “rat snake” (Coelognathus) that has its neck flattened back to look like a cobra. You can tell this from the shape of the head, the two lines on the side of the head, and the lack of markings on the “hood”. Furthermore, the “Trimeresurus gramineus” is in fact Ahaetulla (green vine snakes), so all snakes found in Snake wine come from the farm.