DAVID Rowbottom might have faced less gruelling challenges to get his golden fleece than the mythical team of Jason and the Argonauts did to get theirs, but it was a tough challenge nonetheless.
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Mr Rowbottom set out to win the Zegna “Vellus Aureum Trophy” for the best sheep wool in the world, the golden fleece, when he went into ultrafine wool production six years ago.
He has now achieved that lofty goal three times with his win on Monday of this year’s “Vellus Aureum Trophy” at the Zegna wool awards in Sydney.
Mr Rowbottom scored the hat trick for the coveted trophy with 9.9 micron 900 gram fleece from one of the 300 ultrafine wool Merino sheep he houses in a shed at his St Helens property north of Port Fairy.
The annual trophy has built up the status of the winning ultrafine wools as golden fleeces by awarding a first prize in gold, which this year was 500 grams of ingots worth about $25,000.
Ermenegildo Zegna Group chairman Paolo Zegna said both the Rowbottoms’s fleece and the runner up for the trophy, a 9.8 micron fleece produced by Bradley Sandlant of Lexton, north west of Ballarat, beat the previous world record for wool fineness.
The Rowbottoms also came third in the competition with another fleece.
The winning fleeces are judged on criteria that include style, strength and evenness as well as fineness.
The best fleeces in the competition are used to make fabrics for the luxury Ermenegildo Zegna menswear range.
Mr Rowbottom said good genetics and housing the sheep in a shed to get even fleece growth as well as a clean fleece helped him win this year.
This year’s 500 grams of gold add to the gold ingots the Rowbottoms have won for their two previous golden fleeces and lift the returns from what has been a struggling enterprise in the past few years.
Mr Rowbottom said his ultrafine wool enterprise, which produces between one and one and half bales of elite fleeces each year, was “surviving.”
A less than buoyant European economy and a surplus in supply in the past few years has meant the returns from ultrafine wool have been low.
Many ultrafine wool producers have left the niche industry but Mr Rowbottom is optimistic the reduction of the ultrafine stockpile will lead to prices improving.
Ultrafine wool is part of a mix of enterprises run by the Rowbottoms that include 2300 other Merino sheep that have an average micron of 14.
They also run ewes for lamb production.