Was very excited about this one! My first Levet with proper age on it. In the end it was disappointing. Not because it was a bad wine or way past its drinking window, just… ah well here is the note:
This has a good mix of tertiary notes and Syrah fruit at this current stage, maybe leaning a bit more to the tertiary side now. But it certainly still got some kick left in it. Tannins are resolved and at 12,5% this is an old school Côte-Rôtie with a certain elegance over it.
There are notes of dried hanged meat and a bit of smoked sausage. There are not only pepper notes, but a vast array of spices. It has developed a decent amount of leathery and earthy notes. Almost a bit dusty.
There are no brett or other wilderness that I hoped to find. None.
The biggest issue is that all the above notes a dialed down. It is a low volume wine. You really need to search for them with your nose stuck far into the glass. I was hoping for a louder party, and in the end this could have been any other half decent aged Northern Rhone Syrah.
Ah well you cannot win them all. I think this vintage would have been better five or ten years ago.
Now I need to find a better vintage to sample.
Yes from Ideal. I expect this bottle was in prime condition. Cork in perfect condition, high fill and good color.
I got two more. So lets see, but my expectations are low.
But it was not a bad glass of Syrah, so there is joy to find Mike. I am also not the biggest fan of tertiary notes if they become to dominating, so I am sure other people would get even more joy out of this.
It sounds like a concentration issue of a wine that had too much yield and it is kind of watery. Really well
Made 13% wines can be highly concentrated but still light on its feet. This doesn’t sound like that.
We had a very similar experience a few months ago with the 2009. My tasting note:
I didn’t detect any specific flaw, but this bottle flattened out with air – it had its normal explosive aromatics when I opened it, but by the time we came to drink it, an hour or so later, it was very muted and monochromatic, drinkable but bland.
This is not a Levet issue but perhaps a vintage or bottle issue. I’ve recently had 04 (magnum), 05, 07 and 08. Soaring aromatics. The recent 2010 I had is still somewhat closed. Have not recently had an 09 or 00, but don’t recall 00 being a top vintage in Northern Rhone, but I could be wrong there.
2000 is definitely not a top vintage. Not a highly rated vintage. That is also why I wrote that my guess is that this would have been better a bit earlier on
I don’t think that there is any specific problem with the 2009 vintage of the Levet Chavaroche. We had bottles in 2020 and 2022 that were exactly what we wanted them to be. The disappointing bottle that we drank at the end of 2023 was probably flawed – perhaps a low level of TCA that wasn’t detectable per se.
But I am still open to the suggestion in LasseK’s original note that, if you love the wildness of these wines, you might want to drink them younger rather than older. A bottle of the 2012 that we drank one year ago was excellent, not as wild as the 2007 but very drinkable with a decant, and the 2011 (based on one bottle we have tried) seems to be a more advanced vintage that is lighter but still delicious, and excellent for drinking now.
I can’t comment as to wildness, as that is an individual perception, I find. I think 2009 is generally a bruising vintage in the Northern Rhone, and I have tended not to open mine (even the Allemands have been cranky). 2000 is a somewhat difficult vintage, in my experience, so I’m not too surprised a bottle of Levet didn’t show too well.
To paraphrase you, the 2005 La Chave that we tasted with @MChang and @J_Cangiano about 1 1/2 years ago was “Jumping out of the glass”. So that might be a vintage that you may want to get if you find the opportunity
