Origins and Growth
The nursery was founded in 1890 in Vix, a small commune in the Vendée, by Anatole Mercier. Like many of his generation, Mercier had been drawn into vine grafting by the phylloxera crisis, which had forced French viticulture to rebuild itself almost entirely on American rootstocks. He trained in Angoulême, returned to replant the family holding, and the quality of his grafts brought in enough outside orders to make a business of it. His son Roger continued the work until 1970, when Jean-Pierre Mercier and his brothers took over and began transforming what was still a regional operation into something considerably larger. The company is now headquartered at 16 rue de la Chaignée in Vix and, according to its own published figures, employs more than 300 full-time equivalent staff and exports to around fifty countries, with international business accounting for 30 to 40 percent of revenue. Its standing as one of France's foremost vine nurseries is consistent with trade press reporting, though no independent verification of market share data was available for this article.
Sanitary Quality as a Business Strategy
What separated Mercier from most French nurseries through the latter decades of the twentieth century was not scale alone but an early and persistent focus on plant health and traceability. Jean-Pierre Mercier's generation was, according to the company's own historical account, among the first in the sector to treat sanitary quality as a differentiating commercial asset rather than a regulatory obligation. In the 1980s the company created a dedicated R&D and diagnostic laboratory, Novatech, and began building its own mother vine parcels to reduce dependence on external suppliers for grafting wood. In the 1990s it became an early adopter of green grafting — grafting performed during active sap flow, which is said to improve vascular continuity between scion and rootstock — and was reported during that period as a leading nursery in European markets. The Novatech laboratory currently holds COFRAC accreditation under ISO/IEC 17025 for ELISA-based pathogen analysis, with PCR screening added subsequently.
CleanPROCESS, Trichoderma, and the Biocontrol Portfolio
From the early 2000s onward, Mercier concentrated its R&D on biological approaches to plant protection, specifically targeting wood disease pathogens, which remain one of the most economically damaging problems in commercial viticulture. The company developed a disinfection protocol using neutral anolyte — a natural oxidizing agent effective against both bacteria and fungi — applied systematically to plant material, tools, and production facilities. This process, marketed as CleanPROCESS®, is covered by an international patent filed under publication number WO2013/110531. In parallel, Mercier developed protocols for inoculating its plants with Trichoderma atroviride strain I-1237, a naturally occurring fungal antagonist of wood disease pathogens. The commercial product based on this strain, Tri-Wall®, was developed in collaboration with Idai Nature and became one of the first biofungicides approved in France for use against vine wood disease pathogens, registered under AMM n°2210388. Plants treated through these processes fall under the CleanPLANT® range for disinfected material and the ForcePLANT® range for mycorrhized and inoculated plants, both now incorporated into the broader Altis® product line.
Resistant Grape Varieties
Mercier's move into disease-resistant varieties has been gradual but increasingly deliberate. The company became an officially recognized vine selection and breeding organization in 2018, giving it the legal standing to develop and register new cultivars. At the Vinitech trade fair that same year, R&D director Olivier Zekri was already pouring wines from German resistant varieties Muscaris and Souvignier Gris, as well as from a Swiss Sauvignon × Riesling cross then identified by the code CAL 06 04 and subsequently named Réselle — a variety that attracted attention in part through the advocacy of Languedoc producer Vincent Pugibet. The nursery distributes resistant varieties from other programs alongside its own, including INRAE's ResDur series (Floréal, Voltis, Artaban, Sirano) and selections from German and Italian institutes. At a resistant variety fair in Montpellier in early 2026, Mercier presented Calardis Blanc alongside its own Nathy-Sauvignac, with positive feedback reported for the former's performance in both still and sparkling styles.
Nathy-Sauvignac and the Breeding Program
Mercier launched its internal breeding program in 2013 with the stated aim of producing cultivars that combine the disease resistance of hybrid varieties with the wine quality of traditional Vitis vinifera. The first result of that program, Nathy-Sauvignac, reached commercial release in 2020 — a timeline that reflects the inherent slowness of variety development, which requires years of agronomic and sensory observation before submission to official evaluation. Nathy-Sauvignac has since been admitted to the list of authorized varieties for IGP Val de Loire and is under evaluation in other regions as part of ongoing adaptation trials. As of 2022, according to reporting in L'Informateur Judiciaire, more than twenty additional varieties from the program had been submitted for VATE evaluation — the French Value for Agricultural and Technological Use trials that precede catalog registration. No commercial release dates for these varieties were available in sources consulted for this article.
The Soilless Greenhouse
In early 2021 Mercier brought into operation a 4-hectare greenhouse near its Vix headquarters in the Vendée, purpose-built for the soilless pre-multiplication of vine mother stocks. The facility grows vines on coconut fiber substrate under a fully controlled climate, with drip-fed water and nutrients. Under conventional field conditions, a mother vine yields grafting wood after four years and the soil requires a twelve-year rest period between successive plantings. In the greenhouse, a single vine produces sixty cuttings within one year, with no soil constraint.Across one hectare, 41,000 vines can be cultivated, generating 2.4 million cuttings annually. The full installation's theoretical annual capacity is 9.8 million cuttings, compared to 800,000 on an equivalent area of conventional production. The practical consequence for growers is access to newly registered varieties approximately four years earlier than conventional supply chains would allow — a consideration that matters a great deal when a new AOP admission or a change in pesticide regulation creates sudden demand for a specific cultivar. The company reports that the greenhouse created 25 permanent skilled positions and, at 5 km from the main grafting workshops, has substantially reduced the transport of plant material compared to conventional pre-multiplication arrangements, where source parcels are sometimes located more than 500 km away.
Product Range, Distribution, and Market Positioning
Mercier's commercial offer is organized under the Altis® label, which encompasses three plant formats: the traditional bare-root Altis®, pot 7 and pot 9. The pot formats are mycorrhized at the root — using a production protocol developed in-house to achieve consistent, high-level symbiosis between mycorrhizal fungi and the plant's root system — on the basis that this improves establishment and stress tolerance after planting. The mycorrhization process is described by the company as only reliably achievable in container format, where the first vegetative cycle can be fully controlled.Distribution is supported by 17 field technicians and three regional logistics centers with cold storage: in La Lande-de-Fronsac (Nouvelle-Aquitaine), Saturargues near Lunel (Grand Sud, which represents around 25 percent of total sales), and Beaune (covering Burgundy, Champagne, Alsace, and the northeast). An Argentinian subsidiary, Mercier Argentina, has operated since the 1990s. Alongside resistant varieties, the company reports renewed interest from southern French growers in older, largely abandoned Vitis vinifera cultivars — among them Aramon, Terret and Carignan Blanc — which are attracting attention for their tolerance of heat and drought. Mercier has established trial plots in the South to track these varieties under changing climatic conditions.