After tasting Levet’s 2016 Maestria/Les Journaries i was really impressed by the rustic wild nature of it, while having a beautiful layered fruit. It was such a great wine until it shut down!
Since then i have bought a few vintages of both Maestria/Les Journaries and La Peroline/La Chavaroche.
I know quite a few people on this board like Levet a lot. So a few questions for you:
Is it also worth buying the Amethyste cuvee?
How do the different cuvees evolve? Do they keep that wild edge i found in the 2016?
Do you wait a minimum amount of years before you approach the different cuvees.
Personally, I don’t think the Amerhyste is worth buying. Not because it’s not good but because the price difference between it and the Journaries/Maestria and the Chavaroche/Peroline is so small.
I think the Chavaroche especially does keep its wild side, but retains a lot of the fruit. The best Levets I’ve had have been late 90s/early 2000s. In a pre-pandemic horizontal of 04s the Chavaroche (peroline, technically) was one of the best wines. But I do think it needs a lot of age, personally - and I own a lot of it
Agree 100%, not surprisingly. I do not buy the Amethyste cuvee, think I only did in 2015. I usually buy both Les Journaries and La Chav, as they are different wines, both generally excellent. That 2016 is excellent. I would not intend to touch them for at least 10, but preferably 15, years. Les Journaries, I find, is usually more approachable before La Chav. If you like the wild expression, try 2011 and 2008, not generally regarded as great vintages of Levet, but I like them. The 2004 and 2007 are gorgeous right now.
Am fairly new to Levet, but do buy Amethyste as well as it is about 45-50% less than Maestria in my market. Perhaps an assumption, but something to drink a bit sooner too.
I had a '14 Chavaroche couple of days ago and it was incredible upon opening. All that wild feral notes I love about Levet were all there. Though, it did shut down hard maybe about an hour later. Is shutting down due to wine being too young at this stage or something else? Curious since OP mentioned the same thing about shutting down.
It seems like I opened mine way too young then. It was so wild upon opening that I thought it would stay that way throughout the night, but I should just wait on my other bottles then!
I had the 99 La Chav last year (cellared since release) and it is in the MFing zone right now. To my palate, the perfect balance between feral and focused.
The 2007 Chavaroche would be perfect for drinking now. The 2009 Chavaroche is a lot of fun to drink now but could certainly benefit from more cellar time – my tasting note from September is that it is a wine more for chewing than sipping. Anything younger won’t be ready to drink yet.
When the 10’s were released, we did a full vertical from 03-10. At that time (Must have been 12 or 13), the 03 was kind of anomalous in the expected way and the 04 was beginning to develop. Every other vintage was unchanged in taste from release. I do remember from its youth that the 06 Chavaroche was one of the best Syrahs I’d ever tasted and it remains in my top 5. For those that remember Ehren Jordan’s Cuvee d’Honneurs from Neyers, it did a lot of the same things.
I had the Amethyste 2017 a couple of weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it. I don’t have a lot of experience with Levet, so take this for what it is.
But for the relatively modest amount, I was extremely happy, and regret only buying three bottles. As many others write it has a fantastic wildness to it both when smelling and tasting. Frankly, I don’t understand why this stuff isn’t more expensive.
Although you can at times find the Journaries for $15 more, the lowest wine searcher price for ameythyste is $52 and for Maestria is $69 (for different vintages, it is true). The Chevaroche is a good bit more again. But let’s say $15. That’s a fair amount of money so I take it you find it a much better wine, such that the lower priced one is not worth bothering with.
You’re trying really hard to be difficult, for reasons that I assume you know. However, i will, against my better judgment, try to be helpful. The Amethyste, is no longer labelled as such in US market, but rather is just called Cote Rotie. The average price on WS Pro for the base Cote Rotie is $79 (the sole $55 Amethyste listing is a pretty big outlier). The average for the Journaries is $85. That is a $6 difference. Perhaps it is very 1st world privilege of me to suggest that $6 is not a lot of money. However, to me, no it is not. If that’s the difference between top cuvees and the base, I’ll buy the top cuvee every time.
As for the (utterly bonkers) argument that because there’s a better wine available for a slightly higher price it means the cheaper wine is “not worth bothering with”, no one other than you has claimed this and it doesn’t even logically follow. Sometimes higher end wines can be the better bargain, which says nothing about the quality of the lower end wine.
I am not trying to be difficult. I do contest your facts. The Amethyste, so labelled, is available for $52 at Macarthur’s and $55 at Somm Picks. The Journaries, labelled Maestri, costs $70 (as I said, two different vintages, 16 and 17). Would that price difference change the choice you make? If not, why? I have never had the Amethyste. If it were markedly inferior, I would follow your advice. But at the price available to me, it does seem a bang for the buck if it is in the ballpark of the other two.
My average pricing is all based on the 2017 vintage. You’re basing the entire argument on the fact that one merchant in the country has a randomly low price on a wine, which is either an argument made in bad faith* or an argument with which there’s no reason to engage any further.
*I mean, Sommpicks also has the 2017 Journaries for just $10 more, which shows the small difference in pricing between the cuvees, but looking at pricing at the same merchant would have ruined your…fun? I genuinely don’t know what you’re getting out of this.
I liked Amethyste, it was rather good, but was not as exciting or feral as Les Journaries and La Chav. Those two are well worth the added premium, which really is minor here. I only bought one vintage and then moved in, whereas I buy the two top cuvees in every vintage since 2004.
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