Yes, You Can and Should Age Rosé

Here's how to find a bottle that's worth keeping in the cellar until next summer.

You might be tired of reading about rosé. For the last 15 years, the pink wave has seen soaring production and consumption figures, with sales up 118% from 2015 to 2020 and $3.1 billion of sales worldwide in 2022. It’s inspired trend pieces about everything from millennial marketing to whether jalapeños belong in your wine glass, countless celebrity brand extensions, and increasingly cringe hashtags. You’d be forgiven for considering the category all-too knowable.

Most of us are taught to drink rosé while it’s still young and fresh, meaning we’re prone to pick up bottles of the latest vintage to pop open within the next few weeks or maybe hours. We’re not wrong! Many rosés are designed to be drunk exactly that way, cold and fresh and preferably next to someone’s pool, but those aren’t the only rosés on the market. There’s also a small segment of winemakers who craft rosés that can age anywhere from three to 20 years in the bottle. For those willing to wait, ageable rosés present an entirely new dynamic to a style of wine that is easy to love but, in some circles, is rarely taken seriously.

The trick is knowing how and where to find age worthy rosé. In a sea of pink, how do you differentiate a fun, free-wheeling summer crush from a wine that’s built for the long haul?

Related: The 33 Best Rosés to Drink Right Now

It all depends on how the wine was made. “There’s a fork in the road with rosé production,” explains Nicole Rolet, principle and CEO of Chêne Bleu, in Provence. Some winemakers cultivate and vinify certain grapes for the express purpose of crafting quality rosé. Chene Bleu’s winemaking team, for instance, plants and tends to five carefully selected red and white grapes to make its rosé. The wine is vinified via direct press and maceration rather than the traditional and sometimes less esteemed saignée method, which involves draining off some red wine to vinify as a rosé.

That’s because a producer like Chêne Bleu is devoted to quality rosé, whereas others might optimize grape selection, cultivation, and winemaking processes to make top-tier red wines, and then treat rosé as an offshoot. Pink wines are made quickly and brought to market even faster as more of a seasonal or commercial enterprise than the wines on which producers stake their reputations. They may well result in something tasty in your glass, but they’re rarely built to age.

Plus, some of those love-’em-and-leave-’em rosés are made with additives like tartaric acid to achieve the pale color and crisp flavor of preternaturally popular Provencal rosé, Rolet says. “That’s the stuff that’s generally going to condemn your wine to a short shelf life. It separates over time, and the wine will fall apart and lose its aging potential.” This can be especially misleading to people who associate pale-colored rosé with Provence and all things Provençal with quality. In reality, ballet-pink wines of varying quality are made worldwide.

Unfortunately, when you’re casually browsing a wine shop, there’s no way to know whether a winemaker has used what Rolet calls “magic powders” to doctor their rosé. In the U.S., wineries aren’t required to list ingredients on their labels, which is one reason why considering grape variety comes in handy.

Related: 15 Editor-Approved Sparkling Rosés for Every Budget

Look for rosé blends with grapes that age well

“We know that Syrah and Bordeaux blends tend to age very well,” says Dimitris Skouras, winemaker of Domaine Skouras in Argos, Greece. “Years of winemaking has shown that all of those are varieties that are capable of aging.” Skouras’ popular Peplo rosé is made with equal parts Syrah along with two indigenous Greek varieties, Agiorgitiko and Mavrofilero.

By that logic, a rosé made with high percentages of long-lasting red varieties like Syrah, Mourvedre, or Baga, grown in regions where they’re known to flourish, can indicate the wine was built to last.

Nothing in wine is easy, though, so there are complications here, too. Even if a wine is made with Syrah or Mourvedre grapes from a well-reputed region or estate, there’s little to stop that producer from vinifying it for speed rather than quality, preserving or stabilizing it for immediate release with additives, or creating an otherwise short-lived rosé.

Higher cost can indicate ageability in rosé — sometimes.

“Price can be a tip-off,” says Gary Itkin, general manager and buyer for Bottlerocket Wine & Spirit in New York City. Many rosés designed to be drunk young will retail for $10 to 20; It’s unlikely they’ll maintain their fresh fruit flavors and acidic structure for too long after release, so go ahead and enjoy them as soon as the mood strikes. However, if you see a rosé at a wine shop for $30 or more, that could be a sign that the winemaker took care and a longer time to craft that wine.

Still, costlier wines don’t always age or even taste better than their less expensive brethren when enjoyed young, Itkin warns. There are plenty of $30 rosés that will lose their flavor and structure well within a year of release, but they have higher prices simply because the market allows it. A rosé from a brand that shoppers know and love might sell for anywhere from $25 to $40 regardless of whether it’s built to age. In those cases, a higher price tag is more about marketability than winemaking.

Are darker rosés better?

Color is a related and similarly imperfect indication of ageability. Some darker-hued rosés from Tavel, a region in the southern Rhone region of France,  or Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo from Italy are designed to age. However, not all wines from those regions or with those hues are made in the same way or by winemakers focused on ageable wines. Plus, grape skins’ pigmentation varies, so a rosé made from Gamay will look paler than one made in the exact same way from darker-hued Shiraz.

Given all these caveats and inconsistencies, what’s a person looking for an ageworthy rosé to do?

How to find an age-worthy rosé

“Know your wine merchant,” advises Elizabeth Gabay, MW and author of Rosé: Understanding the Pink Wine Revolution and Rosés of Southern France. A good wine retailer can point you toward rosés that either have already been aged or are designed to improve over time in your cellar. They can also explain why that $14 Cotes de Provence rosé is best drunk in the next few months, but a $40 Clos Cibonne Tibouren from the same corner of France will improve over time.

She also suggests looking for rosé bottled in dark green glass as opposed to clear. “You avoid light strike, and it’s an indicator that the producer is not selling on color alone, it’s the caliber of the wine,” Gabay says.

Pay attention to the labels, too — and not just those on that are especially Instagram-friendly. Any Spanish wine labeled “riserva” has undergone at least three years of aging, one in a barrel, according to local law. And so, if you see a Spanish rosado riserva on a shelf, it’s already got some age on it. (Lopez de Heredia is one such Spanish producer widely available in the U.S.) Some of these riserva rosadas are ready to drink now, while others might benefit from additional time in their bottles, so it’s best to ask a trustworthy wineseller for insight.

For Gabay, uncertainties are parts of the joy of rosé. “What’s really exciting is that it really is a brave new world… It’s not like going to top Bordeaux or Burgundy with 200 years of history. We’re still experimenting with aging rosé.”

Besides, at this point in our decades-long affair with rosé, it’s nice to fall in love all over again. Or, at the very least, still be surprised by what rosé is, isn’t, and very well could be if given time.

Related: These 10 Rosés Are the Best You Can Buy for Less Than $20

7 producers making age-worthy rosés

Poggio al Tesoro

Gabay cites the ageability of this Tuscan producer’s rosé, Cassiopea Pagus Cerbaia. It’s made with an equal blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, vinified in French oak and amphora, and aged in bottles for a few months before it’s released.

Luis Pato

Itkin suggests anyone interested in ageworthy rosés look to Portugal, especially this Bairrada producer whose 2005 rosé made from Baga was aged in its bottle for over a decade before release.

Clos Cibonne Tibouren

This cult Provencal label produces roses built to age, Itkin says. The Cuvée Tradition features a small amount of Grenache plus the Tibouren grape, an ancient variety indigenous to the region, grown on a Cru Classés vineyard. The rosé is aged for one year in foudres under fleurette, or a thin layer of naturally forming yeast, before it’s bottled.

Azienda Agricola Valentini Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo

“If you’ve got the dough, Valentini’s Cerasulo from Abruzzo is one to try,” says Itkin. These cherry-colored wines retail for hundreds and are shrouded in mystery, with some saying the famously reclusive winemakers use only 5% of their harvest from their family-owned vineyards near Loreto Aprutino to make wine at all.

Domaine Ott Chateau Romassan

This widely available, pale-pink wine hails from AOC Bandol, a region associated with quality rosé. Mourvedre is prominent in this blend blend, which also has Cinsault, Grenache, and a touch of Syrah, all grown in dry, sunny conditions and limestone and sandy soils.

Chêne Bleu

From a 1000-year-old, high-altitude plot in the Vaucluse department of the Southern Rhône, this pale-pink, organic rosé features Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, and other grapes grown in stony clay and limestone soils more closely associated with the Northern Rhône. Its rosés can benefit from at least three and up to 10 years of bottle age.

Chateau Simone

Gabay and Itkin cite the ageability of the ruby-colored rosé from this AOC Provence label. It features more than six varieties of grapes grown on old vines and harvested by hand, and portions are hydraulically pressed while others are bled via saignée. The wine is aged in contact with its lees in small oak barrels before bottles are released, which gives it texture and structure at every age.

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