The Hottest Wedding Trend for 2025? Custom Wine

When Jesse Katz, winemaker for Aperture Cellars in Sonoma, got a request from friends Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel’s to create a custom wine blend for their 2012 wedding, he thought it would be fun.

“I truly did it as a gift for them when they got married,” says Katz. “This was not a business model.” And for a while, that was true.

Timberlake and Biel were part of the blending process, and a friend of theirs created the artwork on the label. It was called Blue Ocean Floor, which was also the name of a song that Timberlake wrote for Biel.

A few years later, Biel’s brother Justin asked Katz to create a blend for his wedding, too. That blend, called Prophet & Poet, ended up being so successful that Aperture Cellars created a whole new line based on the collaboration. Earlier this year, Prophet & Poet released its five 2021 vintages with Jessica and Justin Biel, his wife, Rose Biel; vintners Chris and Ariel Jackson of Jackson Family Wines; and Katz.

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(From left) Prophet and Poet winemaker Jesse Katz and owner Jessica Biel pour wine. Photo by Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Not Just for Celebs

Since those initial wedding wines, Katz has fielded requests from couples wishing to create their own custom wine for their special day.

“We’ve done stuff for wine club members, friends, and so on,” says Katz. “Some people call me up and want me to make the best wine, and I know their palate, so I blend it. And some people are super involved in the blending process.”

It had all been through word of mouth, until recently, when Aperture announced their custom wedding wine blends. Starting at $25,000 and a minimum of one barrel, which is 300 bottles, this new program includes custom label design or other artwork. Katz says he has seen a steady increase of custom wedding blend requests over the last several years.

“I’m definitely getting asked to do it a lot more,” says Katz. “It’s probably a mixture of people getting to know myself and my wines more and more, and being right here in the heart of wine country in Healdsburg—a lot of people love to come to wine country to get married.”

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Aperture isn’t the only winery to offer custom wedding blends, but it is one of the most critically acclaimed. Blendings Winery in Ft. Collins, Colorado; Artiste Winery in Santa Ynez, California; and Seven Birches Winery in Lincoln, New Hampshire, are just a few of the wineries around the country that offer custom wedding blends. The process generally takes about a year and includes a custom blend according to the couples’ tastes.

Danielle Rothweiler is a wedding planner based out of New Jersey who owns her company Rothweiler Event Design. She encourages her clients to give consumable favors (because let’s face it: nobody wants a random trinket with your wedding date on it except you). Many event spaces, however, don’t allow outside food to be brought in. Because wine is fully sealed, it gets around those rules. Rothweiler has been recommending it to clients since her own wedding 15 years ago.

“My husband and I got married at a winery, and we gave out split bottles of the wine that they serve there, with personalized labels with our name and wedding date on them,” says Rothweiler. “It was a huge hit, because our guests got to go to the winery and sample the wine, and then take a little something home, too.”

While Rothweiler’s wine wasn’t a custom blend, she and her husband chose the varietal they wanted and they made customized labels—which are even easier to procure.

Manos Wine Etched wine bottle — Courtesy of Manos Wine

A Wide Range of Personalization

Several companies are in the business of creating bespoke labels, etchings, images, and more for wine bottles. Mano’s Wine, Iconic Cellars, and Etched Wine are just a few.

Etched Wine, one of the first companies to offer custom sandblasting directly on bottles when it started in 1997, offers its unique and polished look on bottles for all kinds of occasions. Weddings are their second highest producing category, after holidays, for individual orders. It can churn around orders really quickly, offering custom-etched bottles in as little as three to five days.

“Customers often choose from a range of wines we suggest,” says Cane Vanderhoof, co-founder of Etched Wine. “We work with the customer to decide an appropriate brand for their needs. Sometimes, customers send us their own wine or spirits, especially rare or hard-to-find [bottles], or especially meaningful wines and vintages.”

Then the company uses a sandblasting technique to emblazon a logo or design directly onto the bottle.

Aperture also offers personalized labels for their wines, including photography taken by Katz’s father, hand-painted artwork, or etching. Katz may even throw in the barrel head from the wine as a keepsake.

Though these bottles sure do make for a nice wedding day treat and thank you for guests, they can be the gift to yourself that keeps on giving. Many couples who customize their wedding wines revisit the moment on special occasions and anniversaries.

“We have a lot of people who cherish these bottles, when they open them up with their [partner] or their friends,” says Katz. “I get a lot of photos of wines that I made 10-plus years ago.”

Those moments are just as special for Katz, too. “When I think about all that I put into making that wine, and people are still enjoying it today, it’s an amazing feeling,” he adds.