Rosa Madre

Rosa Madre, Dublin: Verdict

If you've been to Rosa Madre once and enjoyed the wine list, coming back is the right call; the depth here runs further than a single visit reveals. Owner and wine director Luca De Marzio has built a 640-selection, 2,950-bottle inventory anchored in Italy and France, with particular seriousness around Burgundy, Piemonte, Tuscany. For an Italian restaurant in Temple Bar, this is a wine program that punches well above the neighbourhood's usual ambitions. At $$$ pricing across both food and wine, you're paying for that depth; and it's worth knowing in advance what you're paying for.

The Space

Rosa Madre sits on Crow Street, one of the quieter pedestrian lanes running through Temple Bar, which means the immediate context is busy but the room itself operates at a remove from the street noise outside. The setting is intimate rather than grand, the kind of space where the wine list arrives as a serious document and the room scale encourages the kind of focused conversation that a 2,950-bottle inventory invites. General Manager Elisabet Reis runs the floor, the service dynamic reflects a venue that takes its wine credentials seriously without turning the experience into a lecture.

The Wine Program

Rosa Madre earned the Star Wine List number one ranking for 2026, a named, verifiable credential that puts it at the top of Dublin's wine venues by that measure. The list's Italian backbone is where the real depth sits: Piemonte and Tuscany are the strongest regions, with France and Burgundy rounding out the serious end of the selection. The $$$ wine pricing means many bottles cross the €100 mark, so this is not a drop-in-for-a-glass situation if you're watching spend. For a wine-first dinner, the list rewards diners who arrive with a region in mind and are willing to ask De Marzio's team for direction. If you visited once and stuck to the familiar end of the list, a return visit is the moment to ask for something further afield, Piemonte in particular is worth exploring here.

Chef Anisur Rahman's Italian kitchen is the counterpart to all of this. The cuisine pricing at $$$ (a two-course meal runs €66 or more, excluding drinks) places Rosa Madre at the serious end of Dublin's mid-to-upper dining tier. Lunch and dinner are both served, a lunchtime visit is the lower-commitment way to assess whether the food-and-wine pairing justifies the spend before committing to a full dinner. The Italian focus means the kitchen and the wine list are genuinely aligned, this is not a restaurant where the wine program exists in a separate register from what's on the plate.

Who Should Book

Rosa Madre works well for diners who treat wine as the main event and want the food to match rather than lead. If you're planning an Irish wine road trip with stops at venues like Aniar in Galway, Bastion in Kinsale, or Campagne in Kilkenny, Rosa Madre is a strong Dublin anchor, the Star Wine List ranking makes it a credible starting point. For food-first diners looking at the upper end of Dublin's restaurant scene, Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen or Glovers Alley will serve better. For those after Italian-focused wine depth in a city where that combination is genuinely rare, Rosa Madre is the answer.

Booking is currently easy, no weeks-long lead time required, which makes this one of Dublin's more accessible venues at the $$$ price point. That accessibility won't hold indefinitely if the 2026 Star Wine List ranking drives more traffic, so the current booking window is an advantage worth using.

For broader context on where Rosa Madre sits in the city, see our full Dublin restaurants guide, our full Dublin bars guide, and our full Dublin wineries guide. If you're building an itinerary around wine-focused dining in Ireland more broadly, Liath in Blackrock, dede in Baltimore, and Terre in Castlemartyr are worth including alongside Rosa Madre as Dublin's opening chapter.