Formed in the 1850s, the Adelphi Wine Club is reputed to be one of the oldest three wine clubs in Oxford. The club draws its membership from undergraduates studying at Exeter College, one of the constituent colleges of Oxford University. It has been forcibly closed down by college authorities several times throughout its tumultuous existence and is currently believed to be dormant.
The club was renowned for its extravagant dinners, and for excessive gambling after each meeting. One black ball was sufficient to exclude an undergraduate from membership. Beginning in 1923, the college forbade any student holding an exhibition or scholarship to join the club.
The society's colours are cream with blue stripes, while the song "Post multa saecula, pocula nulla?" is the club's traditional drinking song.
According to William Stride, there is much dispute about the club's real age, but it certainly dates back to the 1850s and perhaps even further. It possesses a valuable collection of plate, the gift of former presidents, and a snuff-box, curious rather than beautiful, which is handed round at every meeting. However, the whereabouts of this collection is now unknown; it is believed that the college may have confiscated them in order to expunge the society when it was last closed down.
Nonetheless, the Adelphi has always held a prominent place in the life of the college over the last quarter millennium, and has numbered among its members many who have been distinguished both in intellectual and athletic pursuits. Another club, the Falernian, was once started (about 1872) as a rival to the Adelphi, but after an existence comprising both prosperity and adversity, it disappeared in 1887.