Wine Review: Make a splash this holiday season with custom wine labels

Chateau Souverain, known for its striking bottle design and logo icons, has introduced a great idea for holiday gifting.

The company invites wine enthusiasts everywhere to create their own personalized wine labels with the launch of a custom label program. A customized bottle with one’s own name emblazoned on the front is the perfect addition to all entertaining and gifting occasions this holiday season. You can create a free personalized label online at SouverainLabel.com. Simply choose a varietal label, enter a name and shipping address, and that’s it. The site also makes it possible to order the Chateau Souverain wine of your choice already emblazoned with your personalized label.

This holiday promotion allows those of us who give gifts of wine or bring them to a dinner the ability to loudly proclaim who they came from.

With that out of the way, I would like to tell you about the Chateau Souverain wines. These wines are true to the variety, affordable and a nice choice for your holiday table.

Chateau Souverain Vintage 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon ($14)
Cabernet sauvignon is the most popular red wine in the world and therefore, the most criticized. This wine can stand up to criticism as well as all of the other wines in its price category. The wine displays the classical aroma of cherry and blackberry right up front and is expansive. The flavor, which is as big as the aroma, is loaded with cranberry, pomegranate and spice ending with a mushroom flavor in the background. The Chateau Souverain Vintage 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon is a sound, well-made wine that can grace your dinner table with dignity.

Chateau Souverain Vintage 2014 Chardonnay ($14)
This wine is made to be the true California style of winemaking while retaining its individual varietal signature. This wine’s attractive golden color announces the prominent aromas of pineapple, citrus, pear and vanilla. These aromas continue right through to the flavor, where they are joined by pear and a hint of butterscotch in the background. I found this to be a wine that is very easy to drink.

Chateau Souverain Vintage 2014 Merlot ($14)
Merlot wines have really taken a beating in recent years. Earlier merlot wines were soft and velvety with distinct fruit flavors and a cedar wood aroma found only in the well-made and properly aged merlots. Many merlots have been transformed by farming and blending into cabernet sauvignon look-alikes, doing away with the softness that made merlot so popular in the early 1990s. One taste of this wine and the reason that merlots of the past had become so popular becomes evident. It is a fruity wine that presents the brilliant amethyst color of a classical merlot, which is matched by an almost overpowering varietal flavor and aroma. This wine accents dignified amounts of black cherry and plum in both the flavor and aroma with just the slightest hint of green tea and a suggestion of oak. 

Chateau Souverain Vintage 2016 Sauvignon Blanc ($14)
This wine accents all the fruit flavors that can be drawn from that grape variety. Gone are the overpowering grassy flavors and aromas that have often been associated with this variety. Replacing them are nectarine, melon and mandarin orange. Honeydew and vanilla also are present, adding their individual charm. If you have tried a sauvignon blanc wine in the past and had been turned off by the grassy and vegetative aromas and flavors, try this wine.

Wine columnist Bennet Bodenstein can be reached at frojhe1@att.net.