The former Otago rugby identity, who opened the Valley Cafe and Bakery in Kurow in 2006, cannot keep up with demand for his latest pie venture.
"They are just . . . great," he said.
Mr Hotton is no stranger to making a good pie.
His passion for pastry-making and baking started when he was at secondary school and worked in his uncle's bakery in South Dunedin.
During a three-and-a-half-year stint in Vancouver, he established a pie-manufacturing business, supplying cafes and restaurants.
Merino meat had a flavour like no other sheep.
"You can eat any other type of lamb or sheep and you can't distinguish what it is. The merino, you can," he said.
Good pastry was needed to complement the flavour of the meat and his pastry and the merino meat worked well together - "like a good wine and good food".
People had a perception of a "manky old pie" and that it was bad for them.
But the fat was taken out of his meat and fat was not used in the pastry, he said.
The pies were "selling out all the time" with customers coming into the cafe solely to buy a pie.
While Mr Hotton could produce greater numbers making them commercially with a machine, the pies were hand-made and he took his time making them and "that's the way I want them to stay".
His pies - which sell under the label Steve Hotton's Merino Meat Pie - could be found in Auckland, where he sold them through a friend's business, but they would not be found in service station pie-warmers.
"They're not those sort of pies. They're not $1 pies in the dairy," he said.
It was exciting getting feedback from customers and, although it probably sounded odd, Mr Hotton said he got a buzz when people could not get them.
