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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · January 7, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 4

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RHUBARB WINE.

By J. H. Waggoner

QUESTION. Should a Sabbath-keeper raise rhubarb plants to make wine?
ANSWER. I think not. I will offer a few reasons now on my mind.
1. Wine cannot be made from the pie-plant. Wine is made from grapes, and nothing else. Drinks more or less intoxicating, may be made from every succulent plant and fruit, but the juices of apples, currants, corn-stalks, pie-plants, &c., do not make wine. It is a deception to palm them off as wine.
2. The Agricultural papers of the United States are all, and always favorably disposed toward every invention and improvement for the benefit of agriculturists; and they, without exception so far as I have been able to learn, denounce this rhubarb wine as an imposition.
3. The “Farmers’ Club,” of New York, one of the best sources of agricultural information in the country, has always spoken against it in the most emphatic terms:
4. It has been clearly decided that the acid of the pie-plant is not healthful, and the plant should not be used to a great extent. A drink made from the juice is injurious, and not beneficial, as speculators have often asserted.
5. Notwithstanding this so-called wine can be made in abundance at a very trifling cost, it cannot be found for sale in the house of any respectable wine dealer: they will not risk the reputation of their houses by keeping it. Hence, to raise it for profit is a great risk.
6. They who raise anything whatever for the purpose of making wine, are increasing the facilities for drunkenness. Wine-drinking tends to drunkenness, and excessive wine-drinking is itself one of the worst forms of drunkenness. Louis Philippe said, “The drunkenness of France is on wine:” and if it does not so soon lead to beastly intoxication as whisky, brandy, and such, it is even worse in some respects. It inflames the passions and has a special tendency to licentiousness. The French, who are a wine-drinking people, are an illustration of the force of such a tendency.
At another time I will notice as connected with this, two great evils which are overspreading the land, from which even professors of religion are not exempt.
J. H. WAGGONER.
Bowersville, O., Dec. 28, 1867.