A few months ago, I visited the (very) low-key Northern Rhône superstar Agnes Levet at her family’s domaine, Vignobles Levet. She is rightly celebrated for her uncompromising, almost alarmingly pure Côte Rôties, which manage the neat trick of being benchmark expressions of Syrah, and their region, while remaining distinct and singular.

These are wines that are unapologetically what they are, and they take a long time to come around. Levet says one should wait ten to fifteen years, at least, to drink her signature bottling and top cuvée, La Chavaroche—an extraordinary wine made from a vineyard so rocky that, in places, the vines basically appear to grow directly from giant stone slabs. Unless you’re decanting aggressively, I’d call her advice conservative. Also (and I absolutely love this part, I can’t help it) Levet staunchly refuses to make any early-drinking red bottlings. This is a notable point of difference with many other great addresses—Chave, Gonon, Clape, and Jamet, to name just a few—in the Northern Rhône.

Before I go any further, though, I must quote a terrible singer from a terrible band: people, let me get this off my chest. 

When you read about Levet's Côte Rôties, words like “feral” and “savage” come up a lot. I mean, like, constantly. On message boards. In email offers from the smart wine shops that pounce, every year, on their Levet allocations. (Levet only makes around 2,000 cases of wine each year–a volume that’s grown in recent years, thanks to the addition of a Condrieu bottling.) They even show up on the website of their U.S. importer, the estimable Rosenthal Wine Merchant.

Given that, the uninitiated might expect that any Levet is some reeking warthog of a wine. But I’ve been fascinated by these wines for years, and, well, they’re just not. They don’t envelop you in dogbreath when you stick your nose in a glass. They are not particularly “funky,” to use that catch-all/lazy/oversimplified term for natural wine flavors and aromas that are off the map, so to speak, of those one typically finds in conventionally-made wine. 

Maybe stressing “ferality” was necessary for a prior generation of wine nerds, those innocent of a world that encompassed natural wine. Maybe, I dunno, I’ve had unusual and uncanny luck with basically every single bottle of Levet I’ve ever opened. 

What I get instead from Levet, and especially La Chavaroche, is purity and precision, and a framework so intricately and precisely defined that you can almost map out its crystalline structure when it’s on your palate, as if you were the kind of genius who can glimpse the Taj Mahal for a second, turn away, and then sketch it out in full. The imprint of this wine is that strong. I also am compelled to note that, with age, these display great elegance. (For more on that, see my tasting notes of new and older vintages below.) 

I can hang with “uncompromising,” when it comes to describing Levet; to cite just one example, the family has resolutely refused to add Viognier—which softens textures and amplifies aromatics—to their Côte Rôties. I can also hang with “ultra-traditional.” I can even hang with “rugged” and “untamed,” if we’re talking about how these wines present themselves early on, before age tames the tannins and opens their formidable structures. But to go with “feral” and thereby imply that these are dirty or imprecise wines—no. No. No, my dude, I will not. These are great, characterful wines, and the stony soul of Levet’s La Chavaroche is an absolute wonder to behold. 

When you dig into the Northern Rhône, you find that, when compared to France’s other great regions, many of its top domaines haven’t been at it for that long. This is true for Cornas’ superstar Thierry Allemand, who only began clearing brush for his vineyards, and buying other key existing plots, in the Eighties. It’s true for Domaine Pierre Gonon, which first bottled its wine—a white, interestingly enough—in 1964. It’s also true for Vignobles Levet. The label’s first vintage was 1983. 

It all began, perhaps, with defiance. Levet’s grandfather, Marius Chambeyron, began planting the family’s vines back in the forties. The Northern Rhône then was dominated by the big names—Guigal, Vidal-Fleury. Chambeyron “didn’t want to sell wine to the Guigals. He wanted to make his own wine,” Levet told me. This was an unusual notion at the time, but Chambeyron was not a retiring sort. The big wineries—the likes of Guigal and Paul Jaboulet—emblazoned their names on the region’s hillsides. (They persist to this day.) In response, Chambeyron famously painted his name on the giant rocks in his own vineyards. 

Agnes’ parents Nicole and Bernard Levet took over in 1983. Agnes came back to the domaine in 2004, after a stint working in Minervois at a water treatment facility. (“It was not my favorite,” she understates.)

As with many great vineyards and great domaines, the underpinning is both the skill and sensibility of its farming and winemaking, and some decisions that, in retrospect, were unwittingly far-sighted. First: the Levet’s steeply-terraced and almost comically rocky vineyards turned out to be great terroir. (The trick is, of course, not messing that up—the Levets absolutely have not done so, but the same cannot be said for those who now shepherd some other great terroirs in the region.) Levet’s grandfather planted the ancient Sérine clone of the Syrah grape, which is exclusively found in parts of the Northern Rhône, and which explains some of the wines’ unique character. Perhaps most importantly, when it came time to replant, her father shunned the standard-issue Syrah clones then in vogue. “He found Syrah from the south. It was very productive,” says Levet. “And he said, ‘no, it’s not for us’”—and, wisely, went with sélection massale, thus preserving the family’s precious Sérine vines.

Levet is a deeply humble sort, who’s both soft-spoken and surprisingly candid. Unprompted, she admits that in two difficult vintages this century—2008 and 2021—she chaptalized the wines. (One other winemaker I visited when in the Northern Rhône conceded he, too, chaptalized in 2021.) She also has added a touch of tartaric acid to her bottlings at times, to ensure freshness in a world of hotter and hotter vintages—at the beginning of fermentation, when, she says, it can better integrate with the wine. 

This may appear to be slightly at odds with the purity and take-it-or-leave-it-ness of these wines. But this domaine has long evidenced an independent streak. “We do our own way,” shrugs Levet. 

Then it was onto the bottles. Levet poured her just-bottled 2021 reds, of which there are just three, all Côte Rôties: La Chavaroche (which is known as La Peroline in Europe), Les Journaries (which is called Maestria in Europe), and Amethyste. The ‘21 Chavaroche was shockingly open, and I expressed my surprise to Levet. She told me that it’s not unusual for her freshly-bottled wines to be surprisingly approachable for a few months, before they shut down for years. The Chavaroche, she continued, “can be very savage.”

Oh dear. That word, again. 

2021 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie Amethyste ($90)

Remarkably open on the nose—fresh and grapey—despite its youth. Darker-berried fruit lurks within an intense structure. Tannins are small but they are definitely present. Needs time, and a lot of it, but you knew that. A blend of different plots of Syrah from around ten vineyards. 

2021 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie La Chavaroche ($110)

From their justly-famed and almost unimaginably rocky vineyard. A very interesting palate–a burst of dark berries and pepper before the tannins come in. Briny finish lasts forever—seriously, like for a minute. That said: wait until the early 2030s, at least, before cracking one of these. Note: The U.S. bottlings of this are La Chavaroche; those intended for European markets are La Peroline, with labels featuring local artists’ works, and these do sometimes turn up in the U.S. as well. 

2021 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie Les Journaries ($105)

Palate leans decisively towards olives and tapenade, with a lift of violet, and lots of olives on the nose. The darker berries are a supporting player in this cuvée. If there’s a gun to my head, I choose La Chavaroche over this one, but given how obsessed I am with that wine, that’s no knock. This is by no means a lesser bottling—rather it’s a sibling with a distinct personality of its own–and some consider this Levet’s best wine. Primarily made from older vines, farmed by the family, in the appellation’s famed La Landonne vineyard, along with some fruit from the family’s holdings in Côte Blond (where the sandier soils result in finer tannins) and Côte Rozier. 

2016 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie La Chavaroche ($110)

Inky in the glass, and the essence of the rocky vineyard on the nose, with a touch more sweet blue-black fruit. Long and minerally finish, with some grip. There’s more stuff to this one—tightness shaded with bitterness around the core. This is not giving up all its secrets yet, and even after a substantial decant a formidable structure around the core persists. As ever, this is a wine that insists on being what it is and coming around when it deigns the time is right, but there is plenty of everything you could possibly want here. 

2016 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie Les Journaries ($90)

Noticeably tight upon opening, but blossoming after an aggressive decant and some time in decanter. Rocks and olive and tapenade on the nose. Somewhat fuller in the mid palate than the Chavaroche from this vintage, and definitely more savory, blackberries fighting it out with tomato. This may sound weird, but it totally works—tomato is a berry, too! 

2015 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie La Chavaroche ($129)

The ripeness of the vintage is noticeable—this is a darker expression of Levet’s Syrah—and there is definitely still some baby fat here. Intense nose of finely crushed rock, ripe blackberry, a hint of char and freshly cut herb, and a whisper of funk. The fruit is quite present; a decent dollop of sauvage lurks in the mid palate as well. (Yes, that happens sometimes.) As ever, a lasting, rocky, and entrancing finish with ridiculous sustain—that Levet power chord hangs in the air forever, albeit with more fruit overtones at this stage before the minerals come up at the end. Enjoyable now with a decant for sure, but I really want to know where this will be after a few more years, when the primary fruit recedes and its essence gleams.

2015 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie Amethyste ($90)

Still young—still a bit of baby fat and unresolved tannin—they’re fine, but they’re very present—on the finish. A bit more exuberance in the blackberry, but the classic Levet hallmarks of stoniness and purity are evident–a purity that is so intense it almost shades, in a good way, into a kind of austerity.

2010 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie La Chavaroche ($140)

Olives and, at least in the context of this domaine, generous brambly fruit on the nose and palate—this is a whole-cluster kind of domaine—within a structure that has eased given the time in bottle, but still immediately evokes the extraordinarily rocky soils of the vineyard. Tasty, profound, and with a kind of crystallized clarity that makes me think of snow-covered fields gleaming beneath the piercing sunlight of a cloudless winter’s day. There are hints of the sauvage, but only hints. This is a remarkably elegant and lithe wine, from a great vintage for what’s one of the world’s greatest expressions of Syrah. 

2005 Vignobles Levet Côte Rôtie La Chavaroche ($NA)

Intensely focused, and utterly the thing that it is. The absolute essence of Chavaroche: rocks, rocks, rocks (you do get the sense that you’re drinking the vineyard here) surrounding a laserlike beam of remarkably pure dark berries. There is a lightness that contradicts the ‘feral’ tag so often applied to this domaine, and a very, very long finish. Lovely, elegant, and even energizing; a stunning and almost shocking purity Just gorgeous. And, for what it’s worth, it made my list of my favorite wines of 2024.