sourced from www.stuff.co.nz

California's Saint James company is close to buying boutique Marlborough winery Gravitas – one of three South Island wine makers it has targeted as part of its growth plans.

Gravitas chief executive and owner Martyn Nicholls said he and his wife Pamela had sold a stake in the high-end 40-hectare Lanark Lane winery near Renwick for around $9 million.

But he would remain "a significant shareholder" and involved in sales and marketing for the firm which had distributed the wine to a select group of clients including chef Gordon Ramsay.

"We focus very much on top-end retailers, never supermarkets – or top-end restaurants like Gordon Ramsay who at one point was our biggest customer in the world, and we were his biggest supplier of white wine," Nicholls said.

Early in 2009 Saint James acquired the North American rights for Koala Blue, an Australian label founded by Olivia Newton-John and Pat Farrar.

The United States company had also expressed interest last year in Marlborough wine company, Lawson's Dry Hills, which subsequently pulled out of the sale.

Lawson's general manager Sion Barnsley yesterday said the winery had lost interest in a potential sale during a drawn-out process with questions over funding.

Saint James had also had an Overseas Investment Office consent to buy the Bolitho family-owned Waimea Estates planted in 1992 and located in Appleby, Nelson, and Bolitho Vineyards in Hope, Nelson. The consent decision summary said there was a $34.5 million consideration behind the proposed acquisition of around 52.5 hectares of land.

But Ben Bolitho said any sale remained conditional and "unlikely to go ahead at this stage".

Nicholls said he had bought sheep farmland in the Upper Wairau in 1996 and established the Gravitas winery after a worldwide search for land suitable for a quality vineyard following a career in merchant banking.