Transparent ruddy garnet.  Green stank, crystalized around apricot, roasted peach served on bloody cutting board, beautiful cheap-burg life and spirit.  Grainy crayola-raisin colors a shrieking chalkboard on which you have written the first commandment 100 times before a sweaty recess with hot rubber swings on rusty chains, merry-go-round bark dust and girls.

I found this orphan on a shelf recently and had to rescue it.  I thought they had one which was labelled “Pinot Noir”, but maybe this is the same one.  For sure, it is the cheapest thing the domaine produces.  And such a lovely wine.

In the mouth, gorgeous rich fruit, sweet and perfect, rotund WAY beyond impressions from looks and smell.  Just like a good Pinot Noir almost ALWAYS does.  Bright cherry Sprite curls menacingly around the edges of the tongue, drying and sterning anything you might have read as playful.  A bitter burn slides in early, overwhelming the mouthfeel in straight-up lemon-zest fashion.  Framed in pillars of rock, the weedy briar finish goes on forever.

2011 DOMAINE FAIVELEY Pinot Noir Bourgogne Nuits-Saint-Georges France 13.0

www.frederickwildman.com/domaine-faiveley