Song Lyric Sunday – Strawberry Wine

Our prompts for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday are Banana, Cherry, Strawberry and Olive. I wanted to share Strawberry Wine by Deana Carter. It’s a sweet song and I have always enjoyed it.

I wasn’t able to embed the official video into this post so if you’d like to see Deana Carter in action please click here. Otherwise the video below is just as good.

This is a song about a girl’s first love. The title is a reference to Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, a very inexpensive and fruity wine that is very popular with teenage girls getting their first sips of alcohol. The wine, like the first love, is sweet and intoxicating, providing a valid metaphor for the song.

This was the first single from the album, and it went to #1 on the US country chart. In 1997, the Country Music Association named it Single of the Year. 

The song was written by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison and tells of Berg’s own coming of age as a teenager outside of Luck, Wisconsin. She and her friends would sneak off and drink strawberry wine, often getting sick in the process but making indelible memories.

Berg recalled to AOL’s The Boot: “My dad is a farm boy from Wisconsin, and I used to go up there and stay with [my grandparents] Inga and Elmer Berg, and I met a boy up there.My Grandma Berg just kept having babies, so my aunts were my age. So we used to run around and get in a lot of trouble together, chase boys and whatnot. I told Gary this story, and he latched right onto it. We wrote it quickly, in about three or four hours. We really liked it but we thought nobody else probably would. Pat [Higdon, my publisher] was having this tent showcase with label people and artists coming to listen to the new stuff that we’d all written. And that was the only new song I had. I looked at the floor the whole time, because I was so nervous. When I looked up after playing the song for him, he was grinning from ear to ear. Deana Carter was there, and she was the only artist that showed up. She wanted the song for her first record. The song had made the rounds for a little while before she recorded it, and everybody passed on it [including Trisha Yearwood].”

Courtesy of Songfacts

Lyrics

He was working through college on my grandpa's farm
I was thirsting for knowledge and he had a car
I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child
When one restless summer we found love growing wild
On the banks of the river on a well beaten path
It's funny how those memories they last
Like strawberry wine and seventeen
The hot July moon saw everything
My first taste of love oh bittersweet
Green on the vine
Like strawberry wine

I still remember when thirty was old
And my biggest fear was September when he had to go
A few cards and letters and one long distance call
We drifted away like the leaves in the fall
But year after year I come back to this place
Just to remember the taste
Of strawberry wine and seventeen
The hot July moon saw everything
My first taste of love oh bittersweet
Green on the vine
Like strawberry wine

The fields have grown over now
Years since they've seen the plow
There's nothing time hasn't touched
Is it really him or the loss of my innocence
I've been missing so much

Like strawberry wine and seventeen
The hot July moon saw everything
My first taste of love oh bittersweet
Green on the vine
Like strawberry wine
Strawberry wine
Strawberry wineWriter/s: GARY HARRISON, MATRACA BERG 
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind