Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill

I don't remember specifically where I've come across references to Boone's Farm, only that it's almost always mentioned with an amusing blend of nostalgia and mock contrition. Long Island, where I grew up, didn't have Boone's Farm, and so my curiosity about it was really strong. There are many flavors in the Boone's Farm family of wines, but the one with the most dedicated fans seems to be Strawberry Hill. There's even a dessert recipe for it. Fascinated, I had to learn more...

Priced at less than $3.00, Boone's Farm falls into a cheap liquor category often referred to as bum wines or bum liquors. Google 'bum wines' and you will find yourself at the threshold of a carnival of brazenly artificial alcoholic beverages that is a marvel to behold. Think Fla-Vor-Ice bars spiked with varying levels of alcohol content. In the context of the cheap wine world, Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill stands out as the fairy princess of the bunch. Its faint pink blush and white label called to my inner girlishness like an Easy Bake Oven. After some online searches, a visit to Trader Joe's and Astor Wines, it was apparent that this wine is not available in Manhattan. Inquiries at wine stores in Park Slope drew baffled smiles but no bottles of the precious strawberry-flavored fluid. So I ordered a bottle online and it arrived three days later.



The crisp, clean bottle arrived cold from the wintry weather—very convenient since I was dying to try it. A quick twist of the white aluminum cap and my curiosity was just a short tilt of an espresso cup from fulfillment. I drank in the chilled pink liquid and a pleasantly familiar candy flavor swelled inside my mouth. Not cotton candy, not lollipop...what was it? Aha! I thought. Watermelon Jolly Rancher! Yes, that was it!




More sipping. The vaguely berry but undeniably pink taste brought to mind the Barbie perfume maker my next door neighbor Helen had and how we'd spent an afternoon cranking these plastic wands filled with various colored fragrance concentrates that would transform tap water into colorful scented elixirs such as rose or strawberry. The more you cranked, the more turns of the wand, hence the darker the color and the stronger the perfume. Needless to say, we cranked those wands like mad alchemists—sampling, at times gasping at our Barbie creations as if we had just created Chanel No. 6 through 10.

How long my mind drifted back to recollections of immortal childhood memories, I don't know, but this stuff is delightful. No, it's not Chablis, but put me back in college with a bottle of this, a Justin Timberlake CD (???), and any one from my top 10 list of favorite guys at school, and years later, I'd probably perk up at the mention of Strawberry Boone's Farm with amused nostalgia and mock contrition, too. And that, to quote Martha Stewart, is a good thing!