Crow’s Rock

Crow’s Rock is a new small winery established in February 2020. Its founder, Mher Mherian, relocated to Armenia, after living in California for four decades, and started attending EVN Wine Academy with a focus on Viticulture and Enology. After graduating he purchased a small piece of land in Areni for the future winery. COVID-19 pandemic, then the second war in Artsakh put on hold his plans of building a winery. Mher currently makes his wines at a small private winery in Areni village.

The company has a mission to make high quality wines and sell them at fair prices so they can be enjoyed by more wine lovers. The focus is on unique hand-crafted wines made with minimal intervention that are not available on the Armenian market now, e.g., barrel fermentation, carbonic maceration, whole cluster fermentation, new blends, etc. In 2022, he started making all the wines with natural fermentation without the addition of commercial yeasts or bacteria, and he never fines or filters the wines to preserve the full characteristics of the grapes.

"Crow's Rock" or "Mher's Door", “Agravu Qar” in Armenian, is the entrance to a sacred cave near Van fortress. According to legend, the last hero of the "Sasna Tsrer" epic, Little Mher, disturbed by the injustices of the world, is locked behind that door with his horse. The Door opens once a year on the night of the pagan holiday of Vardavar, when the sky and the earth kiss. Mher rides out to check the progress of humanity, he is cursed to stay in the cave till peace, justice, compassion and honesty reigns in the world, when he can finally return to civilization.

At Crow’s Rock they conduct multiple experiments to reveal the potential of the local grape varieties and understand their compatibility with traditional winemaking techniques. They were the first in Armenia to produce a Haghtanak wine made by full carbonic maceration in 2020, the first to produce a 100% full cluster Areni in 2021, the only producer of 100% barrel fermented Areni since 2019!