“Strawberry Wine”, a song penned by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison, is their signature track. Recorded by Deana Carter, it was considered as her most successful single throughout her career. Released in August 1996, it was the lead-off single from Carter’s debut album ‘Did I Shave My Legs for This?’.

For the chart week of August 17, 1996,“Strawberry Wine” debuted at number 70 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks. In November 1996, the song reached Number One on the chart, reigning for two weeks.

The narrator tells the story of co-writer Berg’s own youth as a teenager outside of Luck, Wisconsin. She recollected,

“We used to go to my grandparents’ dairy farm in the summer. My aunt, who’s six months younger than me, and I would try to score some wine. And I met this boy…”

She compares her love to the sweet taste of “strawberry wine”.  As she was turning into an adult, she revisits this place only to discover that everything has changed.

Considered as a ballad, “Strawberry Wine”, its instrumentation is backed primarily with steel guitar and percussion. Berg shopped the song to record labels around Nashville. Being lengthy and controversial due to its reference to a teenage girl losing her innocence in a not-so-memorable way, they passed. Deana Carter heard Berg perform the song at a showcase and then recorded it for her first album.

The Music Video

Director Roger Pistole released a music video for “Strawberry Wine”. In the video, Carter sings the song while standing in the entryway to a house, on a living room couch, and behind a screen door. Accompanying these scenes is a young couple who is in love. The couple is seen on an old dirt road in the countryside, in front of a house, and in a car driving down a road. Scenes of other people are included as well. There is an elderly man by a rocking chair and a woman standing in what was once a farmland.