Bernard Levet Cote-Rotie Amethyste 2018

The Levet family's roots in Ampuis stretch back to 1936, when Nicole Levet's grandfather made his first vineyard purchase in the Northern Rhône, selling wine straight from the barrel to local cafés and négociants for decades before the domaine bottled its own wine for the first time in 1966. Bernard Levet took over management alongside his wife Nicole in 1983, and today it's their daughter Agnès who runs both vineyard and cellar, continuing a resolutely old-school, minimal-intervention style that's earned Levet a devoted cult following among Côte-Rôtie obsessives. Améthyste, first produced in 2006, is 100% Syrah drawn from vines across both the Côte Blonde and Côte Brune, blended from the lieux-dits Baleyat, Chavaroche, and Mollard — never more than half whole-cluster fermented, and aged in a mix of new and used 600-litre casks and foudres. Production is tiny, typically just 500 to 600 cases a vintage.

The result is Côte-Rôtie with real wild, feral energy: dark berries, blood, and dark cherries mingle with crushed stone, black olive, violet, smoked meat, and a whisper of incense, all wrapped around a dense, vibrant core of fruit. The palate is medium-to-full-bodied and structured, with powdery, occasionally firm tannins and a long, ethereal, liquorice-tinged finish — critics have consistently scored recent vintages in the low-to-mid 90s. It rewards a generous one-to-two-hour decant when young, and holds real ageing potential beyond that. Pour it with grilled lamb, duck confit, or a peppered steak — this is Côte-Rôtie in its most untamed, traditional form, from a family who've been coaxing this same hillside since long before the appellation was fashionable.