Mercian offers a variety of attractive wines designed to deliver “creating good times with good wines,” which is the philosophy of our Wine Business, to as many customers as possible.

Our domestic wines include the representative Japanese wine Château Mercian as well as popular daily wines such as “Mercian Bon Rouge”, “Mercian Oishii-sankaboshizai-mutenka wine”, “a delicious and additive-free wine high in antioxidants,and “Mercian Bistro”. Imported wines include “Frontera” and”Sunrise from the Concha y Toro winery in Chile and the Californian wine Franzia. In this way, We offer an extensive range of wines with a good balance between price and quality. We also stock leading brand wines from around the world that are at the mid-range and high end of the price range.

We were quick to introduce imported wines with screw caps as a means of promoting the “easy” appeal of wine to customers.
We continue to pursue a range of activities designed to make wine even easier for customers in Japan to enjoy. For instance, we have developed a PET bottle for wine that is both highly convenient, being lighter, less prone to breakage and easier to dispose of, etc., as well as kinder to the environment, with lower CO₂ emissions associated with bottle manufacturing and transportation.

Through our association with the Kirin Group, Mercian will continue to utilize the strength of the Group to deliver an extensive range of products designed to anticipate changes in customer preferences, value systems and lifestyles, in order to expand and deeply cultivate a healthy wine market and establish ourselves as the No.1 in terms of customer support.

At Mercian, we utilize our technology cultivated over many years as a forerunner in the wine-making industry in Japan to provide high-quality, delicious domestic and imported wins together with optimum proposals. We delight in bringing the enjoyment of the happy time of richness and warmth of wine to as many customers as possible.

The first wine-making private company in Japan was Dai-Nihon Yamanashi Budoushu-Gaisha, founded in 1877. In that year, two young men were sent to France, the home of wine, to study viticulture and wine-making techniques. This marked the birth of wine-making in Japan. Dai-Nihon Yamanashi Budoushu-Gaisha was the predecessor of Mercian, which today has grown into a leading presence in the domestic wine industry. Château Mercian is the embodiment of this history.

The two students of wine-making: Masanari Takano and Ryuken Tsuchiya

Château Mercian pursues a uniqueness that can only be expressed by Japanese wine, based on the conviction that “good wines faithfully express the grape characteristics nurtured by the climate, weather and producers of the region” and heralding the concept of “Growing Differences in the World”. What has been reached is a style of finesse and elegances.

Through Château Mercian, we will continue our daily efforts to produce better wines in our quest to gain global recognition of Japan as an excellent and unique wine producing region and to have Japanese wines loved and enjoyed by Japan the producer country. Launched in 1970, the Château Mercian series has a proud history of taking out prestigious prizes at a number of wine contests around the world. Also, with the development of brewing technology specifically for the unique Japanese grape variety known as koshu, we have created a new style of koshu wine exemplified by “Château Mercian Koshu Kiiroka”.

September 2010 saw an extensive refurbishment of Mercian Katsunuma Winery, the symbol of Mercian in Japan, including a change of name to Château Mercian. The aim is for the winery to play the role of a base for the dissemination of information about Japanese wines where visitors can both learn about and enjoy wines in a specialist manner. In addition, the winery has undergone refurbishment and additional installation of brewing, storage and manufacturing equipment to further improve the quality of our wines.

PET bottles for wines

The Mercian Fujisawa plant melds brewing techniques cultivated by tradition and history together with advanced equipment and nature's gifts to continue creating reasonable wines that can be enjoyed safely.

We also provide wines to suit a variety of different customer preferences and needs, such as wines that can be enjoyed in combination with everyday meals and wines with specialized functionalities. We enjoy considerable support from customers for products such as Mercian Bon Rouge, a red wine with twice as much polyphenol as Mercian's standard wine, “Mercian Oishii-sankaboshizai-mutenka wine”, a delicious and additive-free wine high in antioxidants, a fresh-tasting wine that is brewed painstakingly without antioxidant additives, and Mercian Bistro, a reasonably-priced wine for the everyday dinner table.

Bottling at Mercian Fujisawa Plant

We also import bulk wines such as “Franzia” from California and “St Hallett Tatiara”, an Australian wine developed by Mercian together with Lion, a member of the Kirin Group. The bulk wine is brought by container ship to Japan in special 24-kl bags (equivalent to 32,000 750-ml bottles) made from materials with low oxygen permeability, then bottled at the Mercian Fujisawa Plant. This approach improves the quality consistency of the wine and also delivers environmental benefits by enabling use of Japanese bottles and packaging materials helps to reduce the environmental impact while reducing by approximately 60% the level of CO₂ emissions per bottle (750ml) associated with marine transportation (based on Mercian calculations).

We supply Japan with an extensive range of wines, including wines at the mid-range and high end of the price range from around the world, from the traditional wine-making countries of France, Italy, Germany and Spain to the so-called New World including the United States, Chile and Australia. We also offer wines that provide a good balance between price and quality.

We currently have affiliations with more than 70 companies in over ten different countries.

At Mercian, we see it as our mission to continue providing delicious wines to the Japanese market and to lead the wine world.

Because Mercian has a global reputation we are able to establish partnerships with the world's leading wineries. Under the common objective of making excellent wines, Mercian has formed secure trust relationships with famous wineries around the world and set up importing and retail alliances.

Robert Mondavi (USA)

Our first alliance with an overseas company was an importing and retail agreement concluded in 1972 with the Spanish company Gonzalez Byass for Tio Pepe sherry. This was followed by alliances with a number of eminent wineries around the world including Chile's leading winery(*1) Concha y Toro; Robert Mondavi, hailed as the father of Californian wine; and The Wine Group, maker of Franzia, the highest-selling stand-alone brand in the world(*2). In sparkling wines, which have been selling strongly in recent years, we have introduced Japan to products from Champagne Pommery, the pioneer of dry (Brut) champagne, and from Codorniu in Spain.

By introducing wines from around the world in this way, we have widened the circle of wine consumption in Japan and helped to make wine more familiar.

(*1) Based on Jan-Dec 2010 shipments; figures supplied by Statistics of Chilean Wine Exportation
(*2) From Impact Databank 2010 Edition

We own Château Mercian, located at Koshu in Yamanashi. In addition, we acquired Markham Vineyards in the Napa Valley in California, in the United States, as an affiliate in 1987, followed by Château Reysson, in Haut-Medoc in the Bordeaux region of France, in 1988. Wen have been installing additional equipment and making all manner of efforts to improve quality.

Markham Vineyards (USA)

Since its acquisition by Mercian, Markham Vineyards has transplanted vineyards and upgraded various types of brewing equipment. These major reforms have produced a spectacular improvement in the quality of the wines, to the point where Markham wines are now highly valued as representative of Californian wines and are even served at diplomatic functions hosted by the federal government of the United States.

Château Reysson (France)

We likewise dispatched technical staff to Château Reysson to improve the quality of the wines. Consequently Château Reysson took out the gold medal at the prestigious Le Concours des Grands Vins de France de Mâcon in 1998, the world's largest wine-appraisal event. This achievement has steadily borne fruit, and today, it attracts attention as a preeminent Cru Bourgeois wine among the many that exist.

Lion, which is part of the Kirin Group, owns the winery St Hallett, which is located in South Australia, in Australia. Together with St Hallett, Mercian has jointly developed an Australian wine designed to suit Japanese customers. It is a special wine that has been made to suit Japanese customers. For example, representatives from Mercian travelled to Australia to attend the final wine blending, which determines the flavor, in order to extract the flavor sought by Japanese customers from among the unique flavors of Australian wines.

St. Hallett Tatiara