The Best Wine Tours, Wine Tasting and Wineries In Marlborough, New Zealand

You have three options for exploring the Marlborough wine region – organised tours, cycling tours, and self drive tours. I’m going to run through your options here, and let you know how to organise your trip and what to expect.

1. Organised Wine Tours

There are a whole variety of companies that offer a wine tours in the Marlborough region and most of these focus on the wineries in Blenheim.

Blenheim is small and contains a large number of wineries situated quite close together, so it’s easy to do a short day tour here. When choosing your tour, read a lot of online reviews to make sure that the company provides a good experience, and choose a tour that includes food!

Is a wine tour for you?

The upside to organised tours is that everyone can sample the wines. You can meet new people, you have a guide to tell you a little bit about the region as you drive through it, and it‘s a little bit less work because the tour company does all of the planning for you ( although on the flip side this also means you can’t choose where you go).

If you do choose a tour the company can pick you up at the Interisland ferry port in Picton or from Nelson and drop you back here at the end of the tour. There are lockers at the pier where you can leave all of your stuff for the day for just $2.

The downside is that this is a lot more expensive, and you actually don’t get to try as much of the wine. If you go to a winery yourself you will pay around 5 dollars to sample as many wines as you like, which is then redeemable against anything you purchase. For our tour we paid $95 each to try around five wines each in four different wineries, and none of this was redeemable against any purchases. This also didn’t include food.

Many wineries also don’t offer the full selection of their wines to members of tour groups but solo visitors are often able to try a wider variety. This might sound like I’m trying to talk you out of going on a wine tasting tour, but when you don’t have transport and you’re short on time it’s the only way you can do it!

Who to book with

As I said we didn’t have a great experience with Marlborough Wine Tours so I wouldn’t recommend them. Here are a couple that we saw while on our tour and would recommend:

• GetYour Guide has many wine tours on offer in Marlborough to suit all budgets. There are so many options, from custom tours to group tours, with food and without. I would recommend checking these out and you have a better chance of finding the right kind of tour for you. Just remember to read reviews first!

2. Cycling Wine Tours

If you don’t have a car, then cycling tours are the best way to experience wine tasting in Blenheim. You’re given a bike and a map and it’s up to you to choose where you want to go and what you want to see!

The wineries of Blenheim are quite close together and the roads are fairly flat so it won’t be a strenuous cycle. The scenery along the roads is absolutely breathtaking, so it more than makes up for the effort. I have to say I was extremely jealous every time we passed people on their bikes while we were doing our wine tour. The Marlborough region has the most hours of sunlight per year compared with any other region in New Zealand, but check the averages for the season you’re going. If you’re booking last minute have a little look at the forecast to see if you’re having a good day.

Can you eat?

You can choose to eat at wineries, or save money and bring your own food. Some of the cycle tour companies also provide you with a picnic that you can eat along the way, so you can pick up a bottle of wine after one of your wine tastings and have your lunch on a bench overlooking the vineyards.

3. Self-Drive Tours

Self-drive is the way Tim and I usually do a wine tasting. It gives you the freedom to choose where you want to go, lets you work with your own schedule, and even if you are the designated driver you still get to enjoy the beautiful views as you drive around and you can sit in the beautiful gardens eating all of the cheese.

Blenheim is a 25 minute drive from the InterIslander pier and 90 minutes from Nelson. You can pick up a map of the region at any winery or I-Site in the area to work out your route around the area. There are maps available online here if you want to plan your route in advance.

The scenery as you drive around the region is breathtaking, and there is plenty of parking at all of the wineries. If you want to stop for lunch somewhere in particular and you’re a large group then it might be best to book ahead if it’s a busy time of the year. It’s not always necessary and often you can just turn up. especially if there are just two of you.

The downside to self drive tours is obviously that one of you is unable to drink! But the benefit is being able have your own schedule and stop whenever you like. You can always pick up a bottle of wine and some cheese & crackers to bring home for the designated driver to have in the evening.

Wineries we loved

If you’re going to Blenheim, here are the wineries you absolutely have to try!

Hunters

Hunters was our favourite winery in Blenheim – and not just because it was set up by an Irishman! The setting is really intimate, it’s smaller than some of the other wineries that we visited, and it has a beautiful back garden where you can sit in the sunshine and have your wine with a delicious cheese platter.

The two women from Hunters who run the tasting told us a lot about the history of the winery, about how the original owner came from Ireland to Blenheim to set up the winery and he is responsible for putting the Marlborough wine region on the map. Unfortunately he was killed in an accident a few years after setting up the winery so his wife took over running the winery and still runs it to this day with the rest of her family.

Wines you need to try at Hunters:

Bubbles, The famous Sauvignon blanc, and Gewürztraminer (it tastes like Turkish delight!)

Saint Clair

This was the first winery we visited and is the busiest as it’s the first you reach when you drive from Picton. The setting of this winery is absolutely divine!

They have an indoor tasting area with tables in the conservatory,  a garden with shaded tables surrounded by trees and vines, and then nestled in amongst the vines are individual tables that are surrounded by 6 foot tall vines for a really intimate setting. If you’re travelling as part of a couple this would be such a romantic setting for lunch – I’m sure you could book one in advance and surprise your partner! The cheeseboards here looked really good, and the wines were delicious. The people working there were really friendly and knowledgable about the wines and we were given a lot of different wines to taste.

Wines you need to try at Saint Clair:

Sauvignon blanc (supposedly the world’s best), Malbec.

Framingham

This winery was a mixed experience for us but I would definitely recommend it if you are not on an organised tour. The gardens are absolutely magnificent and you can sip your wine whilst roaming around and reading the various song lyrics that are printed around the grounds However the tasting room is in the basement so if you’re on a group tour you’ll miss out on the beautiful views.  It felt like a shame being stuck in a dark basement when it was so gorgeous outside.

Framingham hosts a big music festival each year before the harvest and many smaller festival through the year. If you’re interested in music and wine you might want to check out their website and see if they have any events on when you’re there.

Wines you need to try at Framingham:

 Dry Riesling, Pinot Noir

Some wineries that we didn’t visit but were recommended to us are Brancott Estate and Cloudy Bay.

Our Experience Wine Tasting in Marlborough

Tim and I went on an organised wine tour which we booked with Marlborough Wine Tours. We chose them because they had tours that started at convenient times for us, and their TripAdvisor reviews were good. I don’t like giving bad reviews to companies, and this doesn’t happen often, but I’m going to be honest with you and say that I wouldn’t recommend this company based on our experience.

Our tour guide, was uninvolved and uninterested with interacting with the group and was just there to drive us from A to B and encourage us to buy a lot of wine. We weren’t given the option to eat anything for the entire 6 hour tour so we were absolutely starving by the time we finished. We ended up not finishing a lot of our drinks because they were really going to our head between the heat and hunger. The tour also went on longer than expected so we almost missed our connecting bus to Nelson that evening.

We paid $95 / £50 / €56 for a four hour wine tasting trip (although it ended up lasting 6 hours). We took the boat from Wellington to Picton and were picked up right at the pier by our guide and dropped back there to get our bus once the tour was finished. There were 8 people on our tour so it was a pretty small group, which I liked.

The wineries we did go to were absolutely gorgeous and I would 100% recommend going wine tasting in Blenheim! It was so gorgeous and the wines were delicious, but I just couldn’t recommend booking with that company. 

I hope this post was helpful and thanks for reading! Have you been on a wine tour in Marlborough before? What was your experience like? Comment below and let other readers know!

Thanks for reading!
Steph
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