"Sweet Cherry Wine" is a song by Tommy James and the Shondells from their 1969 album Cellophane Symphony. The song hit number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and hit number six on the Canadian charts. This psychedelic song was released at the height of psychedelia and right after one previous psychedelic song by Tommy James and the Shondells, "Crimson and Clover", and before "Crystal Blue Persuasion". It actually expresses Tommy James' Christian beliefs, particularly that "sweet cherry wine" is indeed the Blood of Christ. The song begins with the use of an organ, adds brass instruments, and ends with a solo flute that fades out at the end of the song. Adding to the psychedelia of this and other songs on the album was the then-new Moog synthesizer.
It is also a quiet protest of the Vietnam War. "Yesterday my friend went off marching to war...we ain't a marching anymore".
Famous quotes containing the words sweet, cherry and/or wine:
“Away before me to sweet beds of flowers.
Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I think it was your cherry pies.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)