Lincoln toasts Saint Clair

                                            BEN CURRAN/Marlborough Express
BLEDISLOE MEDAL: A Lincoln University honour awarded to Saint Clair Family Estate managing director Neal Ibbotson, right, is a reflection of his staff, he says. From left: Production manager Liz Chapman, red wine-maker Kyle Thompson and laboratory manager Heather Stewart.

Lincoln University has given its most prestigious award to graduate and Saint Clair Family Wines owner Neal Ibbotson.

"I feel as if they've dragged the bottom of the barrel," Mr Ibbotson says, laughing.

The Blenheim man studied valuation and farm management at the Canterbury university from 1964 to 1966.

Having an agricultural focus, all the students had a common interest in the land and got on well, he said.

"Lincoln was great. There were only 600 – approximately – students at the time and a large percentage lived on the college, so when there was a party on a Saturday night, everybody knew where it was and everybody got an invite."

Theuniversity council judged Mr Ibbotson to be great as well, and is presenting him with the Bledisloe Medal in Christchurch on May 6.

The award is for his outstanding contribution to New Zealand through his viticultural enterprise, and the credit he has brought to the university.

But Mr Ibbotson will be first to say it's the staff around him that make the winery successful, and his wife, Judy, who has been his partner in the business.

"We have such really good people here that running the company is a breeze. They tell me what to do.

"I see it [the Bledisloe Medal] as being a huge accolade for the staff at Saint Clair and what they've achieved. But I also see it as a huge accolade for Marlborough and for what Marlborough has achieved in a short period of time in the international wine world."

Mr Ibbotson moved to Marlborough after graduating from Lincoln to take a job as a farming adviser for the Farm Improvement Club.

He continued to give farming advice and do valuations until the Saint Clair family wine business took up more of his time in the mid-1990s.

He and Mrs Ibbotson were some of the first Marlborough grapegrowers in the 1970s, supplying Montana from their one-hectare vineyard.

However the drive to take more control of their product led to them owning their own winery and six vineyards totalling 140ha.

They made their first wine in 1994. The name Saint Clair came from the historical owner of the land where they planted their first vineyard and founder of Blenheim, James Sinclair.

Over time, the business name morphed into Saint Clair, Mr Ibbotson said.