HISTORY OF DOMAINE: Madame Levet's grandfather first purchased vineyards in Ampuis in 1936 and began making wine immediately thereafter. Initially, he delivered his Cote Rotie in barrels to the city of St. Etienne where he sold it to bistros and cafes for consumption by its miners. In 1966, his son, Marius Chambeyron, began to bottle a small portion of his production. Since 1983, when Bernard Levet took over the wine making as well as the management of the vineyard, he has been the person solely responsible for the development of the Domaine. The Domaine's current total production is 10,000 to 12,000 bottles annually and is exclusively Cote Rotie.
COMPOSITION OF DOMAINE: The domaine consists of 3.5 hectares of vineyards, all of which are located within the boundaries of the town of Ampuis and are entitled to the Cote Rotie appellation. The vines are dispersed among six separate parcels:
| "Chavaroche" | (Cote Brune/southwest exposure/average age 30 years/1.2 hectare) |
| "Landonne" | (Cote Brune/one-third hectare/entirely old vines) |
| "Font Jean" | (Cote Brune/young vines/.15 hectare) |
| Les Craies" | (Cote Blonde/southwest exposure/entirely old vines/half hectare) |
| "Mollard" | (Cote Blonde/southeast exposure/old vines/one-third hectare) |
| "Moulin" | (situated just below La Turque/young vines/.4 hectare) |
The vineyards are all steeply terraced and must be worked and harvested manually.
METHOD OF VINIFICATION: The grapes are generally not destemmed before passing through a pneumatic press. The primary fermentation takes place in epoxy lined cuves. There is a long maceration and the cuvaison lasts three weeks. The fermentation temperatures normally reach 30 degrees centigrade. The malolactic fermentation normally finishes by the end of the year. The wine is then racked into large oak barrels where it spends the remainder of its first year. At the beginning of the second year, the wines are racked into medium-sized barrels ("demi-muid") 10 - 15% of which are new. In the third year, the wines are racked again and left to complete the barrel aging in a mixture of "demi-muid" and small barrels. The wines are bottled after three years of barrel aging with a light fining and no filtration. The cuvee that we always import is from the "Chavaroche" vineyard with the occasional addition of a small amount of wine from "Landonne."
[ Note: Bernard Levet's wines are well-structured wines that are built for aging and experience significant improvement with time in bottle. In our opinion, these wines at maturity reflect most effectively the true nature of the terroir of Cote Rotie.]