Mercury Winery
THE FACTS
THE STORY
Veral Pancholia, an ex-investment banker, is the scion of a Mumbai-based business family that had been planning to diversify into bottled-water production, but found itself instead setting up a wine business in Nashik. Veral’s mother is an architect, and was instrumental in the design of the winery.
The first vines were planted on family-owned land in 2003 with the intention of observing how the plants would do, and so the fruit was not harvested for wine in the first five years. 2007 was the first vintage at Mercury, greatly assisted from the start by consulting oenologist Stephen Donnelley. Till today, most of the grapes are contract grown with only six acres of the family’s large estate under vine; the rest of the supply is sourced from contracted growers.
Pancholia is organised, precise and methodical, traits reflected in his winery, an island of peace and calm. The production unit is well equipped with state-of-the-art imported machinery, as is the laboratory. Even the warehouse is efficiently organised to ensure the appropriate storage of control bottles retained from export consignments. Protocols guide the employees in their daily work and religious chants on loudspeakers supply the wines with spiritual nourishment as they await bottling.
Aryaa, the word for ‘noble’ in Sanskrit, is the core brand of the Mercury Winery. The name resonates well with Indian consumers but leaves me wondering whether it is just my European mind that struggles with the associations evoked by the term. Distributed across fives states in India, though surprisingly not in Maharashtra, the brand is little known despite having been launched with much fanfare. It would be good to see Pancholia change gear and propel Mercury into the biodynamic producer of his dreams.
THE ESTATE
The village of Ozar, just outside Nashik, is the closest landmark for those heading to this winery 190 kilometres north-east of Mumbai. The estate stretches over two hundred acres, of which only six are under vine. The rest of the grapes are contract grown, with all farmers made to follow Mercury’s viticultural policy. Currently, the vineyard practices can be best described as ‘lutte raisonnée’ though Pancholia aspires to become gradually biodynamic.
Mercury works with the varieties most widely grown across India: Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. The vines are cordon trained on high trellis so that they resemble more the pergola than the VSP style. Cabernet is restricted to three tons per acre, while Shiraz is allowed to yield five tons per acre. Once the fruit is in the winery, winemaking is strictly controlled with the help of computerised tanks and a strict analytical protocol throughout the process up until the dispatch of the bottled wines.
Chips rather than barrels or staves economically impart the oak flavour, which is understandable when considering that most of the wines are positioned at entry level. On the other hand, Aryaa Reserve is curiously pitched at the higher end of the mid-range spectrum, though it is a mix of not only varieties but vintages as well and is, therefore, sold as a non-vintage product.
Pancholia does not market his wines in Maharashtra, the state where they are produced, claiming expensive label registration procedures and aggressive discounting schemes demanded by inefficient distributors in Mumbai. Instead, he focuses on other states within India and on export markets.
THE WINES
The whites are clear, clean and made in an overly oaked style giving the wines a very deep colour and oily texture; quite an individual style.
The reds I tasted in late 2014 were vintages 2011 and 2012. They showed generous fruits with modest concentration and firm tannins, but their opulent freshness was on the decline.
The multi-vintage Aryaa Reserve, blended from Cabernet and Shiraz and from across vintages, needs to be tasted before one jumps to conclusions. Such wines may actually be deemed a good, under-exploited marketing concept in a young wine-producing country as blending across vintages allows for the creation of a brand with a consistent house style. In Mercury’s case, this would be described as ‘richly fruity, densely packed, velvety tannins’.
THE LABELS
Aryaa: varietal range; dry still table wines with generous fruit and chips-infused oak flavours
- Sauvignon Blanc
- Chenin Blanc
- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Shiraz
- Cabernet Shiraz
- rosé
Ex: made especially for the China market;
fruity wines with 5g/l residual sugar
- white
- red
- Mex rosé
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