David Rowbottom reckons his family’s fourth consecutive win this year of the award for the world’s best sheep wool is due to luck.
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Mr Rowbottom, of St Helens near Port Fairy, said the 10.7 micron fleece that won the Vellus Aureum (Golden Fleece) trophy at this year’s Ermenegildo Zegna Wool Awards was just .07 of a point ahead of the second placegetter..
While Mr Rowbottom, 68, concedes his career producing superfine and ultrafine merino wool since 1976 has been hard work, he reckons that winning by only .07 of a point from the competition was “very lucky.”
“Last year, we were a reasonable distance ahead of the others,” he said.
The win of the prestigious prize, which includes 500 grams of gold, is an incentive for the Rowbottoms to keep producing ultrafine wool which has been in the price doldrums for some time.
Despite the low returns from ultrafine wool, there were still 170 fleeces submitted for the prize.
“It was the most fleeces ever,” Mr Rowbottom said.
The winning fleece is judged not only on its micron, but also on other characteristics such as soundness, evenness, level of excellence and weight.
The fleece came from one of the 300 ultrafine merinos that the Rowbottoms run in sheds to prevent their fleece from being damaged by weather or contaminated by grass seeds.
The Rowbottoms run about 2500 merinos and house about 300 with the best ultrafine fleeces..
Mr Rowbottom said the family’s fourth win of the Vellus Aureum prize, which brings their gold haul from the awards to 2.25 kilograms, meant it was “achieving something” in the ultrafine wool industry.
“If we were not achieving anything, we would have gone into something more financial,” he said.
Mr Rowbottom said while prices for many fine wools had picked up in recent times, ultrafine wool had not shared in the good fortune.
However he had hopes prices would pick up as the stockpile of ultrafine wool was disappearing.
“It goes in cycles,” Mr Rowbottom said of the prices for ultrafine wool.
The Rowbottoms also produce prime lambs from about 1200 White Suffolk and cross bred sheep, with the returns from that generating good income.
Ed and Jill Hundy of “Windradeen” in NSW, won second place in the Vellus Aureum Trophy, while Ross and Rebecca Blake, “Allandale”, also in NSW, were third.
Italian luxury fashion house Zegna run the awards to celebrate the importance of superfine and ultrafine wool from Australia and New Zealand for its lines that include men’s suits.
