Faiveley, ‘Les Lavières’ 2004 (Nuits-Saint-Georges), $50, 13% abv

Stood up on a Saturday night.

If a guy says ‘don’t worry, I’m not a player’, that means he’s totally a player, right?

Could someone remind me why I should be all enthusiastic about being single?

*sigh*

Oh wait! Ha! I just remembered: being alone means I can order up whatever wine I want without having to consider stylistic or budget preferences of my significant other!

Burgundy it is. (Nah nah.)

The evening is starting to look up.

The 2004 vintage was not a ripe year for Burgundy and some wines I’ve tasted are downright mean & green. I bought some anyway because it’s the clichéd wine to drink while you’re waiting for your 2005s to mature. Still, I have some friends who gag at the vintage the same way they would gag if presented with pureed White Castles at a dinner party (ha! You thought it was paté!!) But I’m not a hater on the 2004 Burgs because a) I’m not overly sensitive to green notes, and b) it’s nice to know that the wines of this under-ripe vintage were not Tammy Faye’d out to be something bizarre.

Faiveley is a fairly large (for Burgundy) vineyard owner and winemaker based in Nuits-Saint Georges. ‘Les Lavières’ is not a 1er Cru (as it is in Savigny-les-Beaune) , but a lieu-dit, or named vineyard without being all special enough to be classified. A few other producers (including Daniel Rion and Domaine Leroy) make wine from the same vineyard.

This Burgundy was not showing that green note typical of the 2004 vintage, though rather stemmy on the palate. Overall, I find wines from Nuits-Saint-Georges to be more towards the masculine side, but this wine was bursting with full-on strawberries, like the first strawberries of the season that are stronger in florals than ripe aromatics. And there was a really strange floral thing going on. Strange because it wasn’t white blossoms or red roses but it was so familiar. It was…fabric softener scent: fresh and borderline soapy.

Huh.

So not quite the happy ending I was looking for on this solo Saturday night either, but the wine paired just fine with last week’s episode of The Biggest Loser (courtesy of hulu.com).