Provence Vintage Chart — Best Years to Buy
Nine bottles in ten from Provence are rosé, made to be drunk inside two years, which is why a single Provence vintage rating tells you almost nothing. This chart splits the region into the four tiers that genuinely behave differently, from everyday Côtes de Provence rosé to Bandol rouge, a wine the appellation forbids from reaching a shop for two years. Every vintage from 2015 to 2024. Free, no login.
Skip the chart for a second. Here’s where the value is right now.
2021 is the vintage the wine trade wrote off. It flattened the northern Rhône and thinned the Loire — our Loire chart reads Good in every row that year, and our Rhône chart in every row but one. Provence never had that year: the harvest came in slightly above its own ten-year average, and in Bandol, where late-budding Mourvèdre came through the April frost that caught its neighbors, the wines came in fresh and firm. Domaine Tempier, the appellation’s reference estate, wrote that in their young stage the wines “recall those of the 90s or the 2008 and 2013 vintages.” Three of our four Provence rows read Very Good in 2021. The market has not noticed.
- Bandol rouge 2021 — if you buy one thing off this page, buy this. Mourvèdre with the acidity that signals long aging, in a wine the appellation’s rulebook classifies as one for long keeping. You pay ordinary Bandol money for it, which is the point: everywhere else in France, 2021 on a label means a compromised bottle. Here it doesn’t.
- Bandol rouge 2019 — one of the row’s three Exceptional years, and the one to cellar. Record July and August heat across Provence, touching 112°F (44.3°C), rescued by a slow, cool, wet spring and cool summer nights. The bottle to buy if you want to open something in the 2030s rather than this winter.
- Côtes de Provence rosé 2024 — the strongest everyday rosé year you can still buy, and the newest on this chart. Frost, hail and mildew cut the crop to the smallest of the decade, roughly a tenth below a normal year; what survived came in bright and fresh. Buy it while it is still inside its window.
- Bandol & cru rosé 2021 — the same year the Mourvèdre slept through, in rosé that actually keeps. Palette, Clos Cibonne and the Bandol estates make pink wine with structure, and this is the vintage of it worth going out of your way for.
- Provence whites 2021 and 2024 — the region’s quietest category. Both years brought the acidity these wines are built on, and both are still findable, which is more than can be said for most Provence white vintages.
Provence is cheaper than its reputation at one end and better value than its reputation at the other. Everyday Côtes de Provence, Coteaux d’Aix and Coteaux Varois rosé runs about $16 to $30, and that band holds nearly the whole category, with a prestige tail climbing toward $80 for the Domaines Ott estates, which sit in the everyday appellations but are made and priced as crus. Bandol and the cru rosés — Palette, Clos Cibonne, Ott — ask $27 to $60 for wine that will still be interesting in a year or two. Provence whites run $25 to $55. And Bandol rouge, the only tier on this page built to be cellared, spans $35 to $110: the benchmark names are into three figures, and the 2021s sit in the middle of it, priced like any other year rather than like the vintage the rest of France would discount.
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| Style | ’15 | ’16 | ’17 | ’18 | ’19 | ’20 | ’21 | ’22 | ’23 | ’24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Côtes de ProvenceAix · Varois · everyday rosé | Exceptional | Very Good | Very Good | Good | Very Good | Very Good | Good | Very Good | Good | ★Exceptional — best value |
| Bandol & cru roséPalette · Clos Cibonne · Ott | Exceptional | Very Good | Very Good | Good | Very Good | Very Good | ★Very Good — best value | Very Good | Very Good | Very Good |
| Bandol rougeMourvèdre · 18 months in wood | Exceptional | Exceptional | Very Good | Good | ★Exceptional — best value | Very Good | ★Very Good — best value | Good | Very Good | – |
| Provence whitesRolle · Clairette · Marsanne | Very Good | Exceptional | Very Good | Good | Very Good | Very Good | ★Very Good — best value | Very Good | Very Good | ★Very Good — best value |
How to read the spread. Every published Provence vintage rating is a single verdict for the whole region, and because nine bottles in ten from Provence are rosé, that verdict is really a rosé rating wearing a regional coat. It cannot describe Bandol rouge, and Bandol rouge is where vintage does its real work. The distinction is simple enough to carry into a shop: for rosé, vintage tells you what the wine will taste like — the 2023s came in paler and a shade lower in alcohol than the 2022s, more classical in shape — but it rarely tells you whether to buy, because the answer to which vintage is almost always the current one. For Bandol rouge, vintage tells you how good the wine is and how long it will live, and those differences are large, durable and worth paying for. Only one year unites all four rows: 2018, when mildew and three hail episodes in the Var made life hard for everyone. Read your tier’s row, not the regional average.
A note on the dash. One cell on this chart is empty, and the reason is a law rather than a judgment. Bandol’s rulebook requires its reds to spend a minimum of eighteen months in barrel or foudre, and forbids them from reaching a consumer before 1 May of the second year after the harvest. The rosé off the same hillside, from the same picking, goes on sale from 1 March of the year after — roughly fourteen months earlier, in the same appellation, under the same rules. So the 2024 Bandol rouge became legally releasable this May and is still not on American shelves; the current bottlings are 2022 and 2023. It is a wine to wait for, not to hunt for.
Read by tier
Côtes de Provence, Coteaux d’Aix & Coteaux Varois rosé — The volume of Provence and the reason the region is famous: pale, dry, made to be drunk young and drunk fast. The row moves less than you would expect. Very Good or better in seven years of the ten, Good in the hard ones — 2018’s mildew, 2021’s uneven ripening, the heatwave that landed in the middle of the 2023 harvest — and Exceptional twice, in 2015 and again in 2024. What matters more than any of it: everything before about 2023 has been drunk. The older verdicts are honest quality judgments, not a shopping list. 2017, for the record, was a drought year here rather than a frost year; Provence largely escaped the freeze that cut the Loire.
Bandol & the cru rosés (Palette, Clos Cibonne, Domaines Ott) — Rosé made like a serious wine and behaving like one. Bandol’s is Mourvèdre-based, Clos Cibonne works in Tibouren aged under a veil of yeast in century-old foudres, and Palette comes from a single limestone amphitheater of about fifty hectares. These hold and often improve over a year or two in bottle, which is why 2021 carries the flag here while the everyday tier that year reads Good: late-budding Mourvèdre came through the April frost, and the results are the best-value cru rosés on the shelf. Very Good in every year but two — Exceptional in 2015, Good in mildew-struck 2018.
Bandol rouge — The one Provence wine the law treats as a wine to keep: at least half Mourvèdre, yields capped at forty hectolitres a hectare, eighteen months minimum in wood, and a rulebook that describes the results as powerful, structured, tannic and long-lived. The estates that define it are Tempier, Pibarnon, Terrebrune, Pradeaux and La Bastide Blanche. The decade’s peaks are 2015, 2016 and 2019, with 2019 the one to cellar, and 2021 the value: the year the rest of France would rather forget, which Bandol quietly got right. Treat 2022 as a producer year rather than a label year — hail crossed parts of the appellation on 17 August and the reds came in lighter, though individual estates made fine wine regardless.
Provence whites (Cassis · Palette blanc · Côtes de Provence blanc) — The smallest tier here and the least charted. Whites are six per cent of what Provence makes, and no publication rates Cassis or Palette vintage by vintage, so this row is built on Côtes de Provence blanc, with Cassis and Palette named as its landmarks rather than separately graded. Cassis is the outlier worth knowing: Marsanne and Clairette lead it, and appellation rules require the two to make up at least sixty per cent of what an estate plants, which makes it taste like nowhere else in the region. Very Good in nearly every year, Good only in 2018, and Exceptional in 2016, when the small berries and cool nights that hurt the rosé did the whites a favor. The practical caveat is supply: the American shelf carries this category thinly, and one of the few Cassis bottlings is sold only by the case.
TERROIR’s read on a decade of Provence vintages, as reported in The Yield. © TERROIR.
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Provence vintages, answered
Does vintage matter for Provence rosé?
Yes, but not the way a chart usually implies. Vintage changes what Provence rosé tastes like: the 2023s came in paler and slightly lower in alcohol than the 2022s, with a more classical shape, and 2021 genuinely underperformed at the volume end. What it rarely changes is whether to buy, because nine bottles in ten from Provence are rosé that reaches shelves within months of the harvest and is drunk inside two years. By the time a chart could tell you anything useful about a 2022 Côtes de Provence rosé, there is no 2022 left to buy. For the everyday tier the right vintage is almost always the current one — or the one before it, when that year was clearly stronger, as 2024 is. For Bandol rouge, vintage decides both quality and lifespan.
What’s the best Provence vintage to buy right now?
Bandol rouge 2021. 2021 was a poor year across much of France, but Provence brought in a harvest slightly above its ten-year average, and Bandol’s late-budding Mourvèdre came through the April frost that damaged its neighbors. The result is a structured, ageworthy red at ordinary Bandol money — a $35 to $110 band — while 2021 on a label anywhere else in France signals a bottle to avoid. For a bottle to cellar rather than open, 2019 Bandol rouge is the Exceptional year with the most life left in it; for rosé, the 2024s are the strongest everyday vintage still on shelves.
Which Provence wines are worth cellaring, and how do I read this chart?
Bandol rouge, and to a lesser degree the cru rosés and the better whites. Bandol’s rulebook classifies its reds as wines of long keeping, caps yields at forty hectolitres a hectare, requires eighteen months in barrel or foudre, and holds them off the market until 1 May of the second year after harvest — a wine the appellation will not let you buy young. The best will comfortably outlive a decade in a cellar. 2019 is the vintage to cellar, with 2015 and 2016 behind it. To read the chart, find your tier’s row rather than the regional average — a single Provence rating is dominated by rosé and cannot describe a red the appellation will not let you buy for two years. The scale is Good, Very Good, Exceptional. A star marks the best value to buy now, and the dash means the wine is not released yet.