In Consinee Group-Top line, merino wool is widely used in our 15AW series yarn products. Top Line adopts high quality extra fine merino wool to produce luxurious fashion yarns. Merino wool is often blended with cashmere, silk, cotton or polyamide fiber and viscose , Lurex yarn such as ELEKTRA is made from 63%Extrafine Merino Wool, 37%Polyamide Fiber. Brushed yarns like WALTZ (27%Super Kid Mohair, 21%Extrafine Merino Wool, 52%Polyamide Fiber) and SCOUT (84%Extrafine Merino Wool, 16%Cashmere) are enjoyed great popularity in market.

But do you know history about merino wool sheep? Merino breeders were associated in the Mesta and maintained a monopoly on the race. The merino seems to have originated from the crossing of Spanish with Berber sheep breeds in the 14th and 15th centuries. Sheep exportation was forbidden, and wool commerce through the ports of the Hermandad de la Marina de Castilla (the local shipping authority at the time) to Flanders and England was a source of income for Castile in the Late Middle Ages.

Eventually, because of the popularity and lucrative commerce stemming form the raising of these beautiful sheep, and the because of the success in breeding and cultivating softer variations of the wool from them, Merinos spread across Europe, especially to Germany, France and Austria-Hungary,. The so-called "American merino", the Delaine, the Vermont and the Rambouillet, are well-known derivative breeds in the United States. They were first brought over to Maine from Portugal in 1810 illegally by Capt. Ephraim Sturdivant. The best-known derivative breeds are the Rambouillet, a large merino breed named after the village near Paris, to which it was exported towards the end of the 18th century, and the Negretti, which stands in closer relationship to the old Spanish stock and has shorter wool but more wrinkled fleece.