Martinborough Area Guide
The delightful country village and vineyards of Martinborough in the southern Wairarapa attract crowds of visitors from Wellington on summer weekends looking to enjoy the best of the area's wine and food.
Martinborough's distinctive street layout, with the pattern of the British Union Jack flag in the centre, is the creation of its founder John Martin, an Irish immigrant, who mapped out the town in 1881. The eccentric Martin was inspired to name the streets of the village after places he had visited on his world tour, so the street names include Venice and New York, and the less likely Panama and Suez. Despite the grand street names, the village remained a quiet farming centre for more than a century - until the first of the winemakers discovered the area's low rainfall, hot summers and long, dry autumns were just right for growing grapes, and reinvented Martinborough as a boutique wine producer in the 1980s.
The village's focal point is Memorial Square where the colonial Peppers Martinborough Hotel, with its pretty white wooden wraparound verandahs, sits on one corner. The hotel was originally a way station for people travelling to and from the South Wairarapa's isolated sheep farms. More recently it was a home away from home for Cate Blanchett and other cast members of the Lord of the Rings movies while they were filming in the gardens of Fernside, in nearby Featherston. Leading off Memorial Square, the main Kitchener Street is dotted with specialty food and gift shops, and tempting cafes and restaurants.
The village is bounded to the north by the vineyards, the main attraction for the scores of visitors who come here in the summer months. The vineyards are best explored with the aid of the Wairarapa and Martinborough Wine Trail brochure, available from the Visitor Centre at 18 Kitchener Street. The leaflet is a good guide to touring the wineries, some of which have courtyard cafes, some of which have tastings and cellar door sales, and others which open only by appointment.
Martinborough is busiest during its fair and festival weekends in November, February and March. The Toast Martinborough wine and food festival is held in November, its 10,000 tickets highly sought after when they go on sale the month before the event. Tickets provide access to 12 participating vineyards, which have on offer fine wines and food prepared by top chefs, as well as live music from some of New Zealand's most popular bands. The huge Martinborough Fair, with hundreds of stalls selling arts and crafts, is held twice a year on the first Saturdays in February and March.
Just outside Martinborough lie the Putangirua Pinnacles, a series of rocky columns which were used as a backdrop in the Lord of the Rings film, the Return of the King. The badlands scenery found here formed gradually over thousands of years as rain eroded away an ancient gravel deposit. It's a one-hour drive from Martinborough to the Putangirua Scenic Reserve, where three walking tracks lead to the pinnacles - the shortest is the one-hour return walk up the stream bed.