Martinborough is a small wine village at the bottom of the Wairarapa where you can park the car on Friday night and not need it again until Sunday. Most of the things to do in Martinborough sit within a kilometre or two of Memorial Square: a dozen cellar doors, the restaurants, the shops, a two-screen cinema and a museum that opens on weekends. The coast is a different story, and worth the drive.
About 1,900 people live here. The town was laid out in the 1880s by its founder, John Martin, with streets running out from the Square in the shape of a Union Jack and named after places he had been: Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Venice, Strasbourge, New York. Once you have the Square in your head you cannot get lost. This is the whole town, sorted by how you get to it: on foot, by bike, or by car.
What is there to do in Martinborough?
Most visitors come for the wine, and that is fair: more than a dozen cellar doors are an easy walk or ride from the Square, and Martinborough pinot noir is the reason the town has a reputation at all. Around the wine there is enough for a full weekend. Dinner on the Square, a film at the Circus, a walk up the Rapaki track for the view back over the rooftops, a round of golf, a bike day on the flat roads between the vineyards, and a long drive south to the lighthouse at Cape Palliser.
The pace is the point. Nothing here is big, nothing needs booking weeks out except Toast and the Fair weekends, and a day that starts with a flat white and ends with a glass of pinot on the Square will have covered most of it. If you are planning around the seasons, Martinborough's dry summers are the easiest time to be outdoors, and winter is quiet, cold and good for fires.
On foot from the Square
Everything in this section is less than a kilometre from the Square, and most of it is less than 200 metres. You can do it in slip-ons.
Across the Square in the Waihinga Centre, the isite visitor centre shares a building with the library, a café and a banking hub. It keeps weekday hours of 9am to 4pm and shorter weekend hours, and it is the place to ask about walks, tours and what is on. The playground is right outside, which makes it the natural meeting point if you have children with you. The community market runs out of the Town Hall in the same complex.
For a coffee before any of that, the village cafés are all within a couple of minutes' walk and most open early.
Kitchener Street and Jellicoe Street are the shopping streets. You will find New Zealand fashion labels at the General Store and 17 Blonde, kitchenware at Mint, a proper bookshop, an old-fashioned sweet shop and a wine shop on the Square that stocks most of the local labels. Kitchener Street's shops open seven days, mostly from around 10am. Down the alley beside Kitchener's Café, Ventana Art Space runs art workshops for adults and children in a light studio, which is worth knowing on a wet afternoon.
For a drink that is not wine, Martinborough Brewery on Ohio Street brews bitters, lagers and IPAs on site and pours them in a covered taproom. The Social Chef food truck usually parks outside. Check the day before you walk over: the brewery is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, opens from 2pm on Monday and Thursday, and from noon Friday to Sunday. Two minutes back towards the Square on Cambridge Road, Tōhi pours more than 30 New Zealand gins as tasting flights and cooks Thai food to go with them.
When you get hungry again, dinner on the Square is a short walk from anywhere in town. Book on Friday and Saturday nights.
Cellar doors on the Terrace
More than a dozen cellar doors sit within about two kilometres of the Square, on the gravel river terrace the first vineyards were planted on in the late 1970s and early 1980s. You can walk to the nearest ones in ten to twenty minutes.
A tasting usually means four to six wines poured by someone who knows how they were made, often the owner. Most charge a small fee, and many waive it if you buy a bottle. The catch is the days. Martinborough cellar doors do not keep one pattern: some open Wednesday to Sunday, some only at weekends, some by appointment for guided tastings. Check the day you are going before you set off, especially on a public holiday.
The nearest cellar door is barely out of the village. The Good Way pours its own pinot noir, chardonnay and a sparkling rosé in cans on Ohio Street, 200 metres from the Square, from 3pm to 7pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Walk out along Kitchener Street and Grava and Tiwaiwaka sit side by side about 800 metres from the Square. Grava pours chilled reds, makes wine in Spain and here, and opens Friday to Sunday. Tiwaiwaka is run by its owners, Morton and Elise Anderson, from Wednesday to Sunday.
Palliser Estate and Nga Waka are another 200 metres along the same street, and both do food. Nga Waka opens from Wednesday, and its weekend hours vary, so check before you leave it for Sunday. Ata Rangi, one of the vineyards that started it all, opens from 10am to 4pm every day and runs guided tastings in its Wine Room that are worth booking.
Martinborough Vineyard on Princess Street farms some of the oldest pinot noir vines in the country.
Schubert and Margrain sit close together near the corner of Cambridge and Huangarua roads, and Margrain's cellar door is open seven days. Poppies, a little further out on Puruatanga Road, is where a lot of people end up for a platter lunch among the vines, from 11am to 4pm daily.
Beyond these are the cellar doors on Puruatanga and Todds roads and the bigger names out on Te Muna Road. Every one of the cellar doors on the Terrace is placed by how far it is from the Square and whether you can walk it.
By bike
A bike is the usual way to cover the Terrace, and the roads between the vineyards are flat and quiet. Three hire businesses in the village rent everything from single bikes to six-person pedal carts.
Indi Bikes on the corner of Strasbourge and Kansas streets hires bikes, trikes and four-wheeled cycles that seat up to six, and has dog trailers if the dog is coming too. E-Rides on Regent Street rents e-scooters with seats, which suit anyone who wants to cover ground without pedalling.
The vineyards on Puruatanga Road and Todds Road, one to two kilometres out, are an easy ride. Te Muna Road is further and narrower, and only relaxing on a bike if you are fit or on an e-bike. If you would rather someone else drove, bike hire and guided wine tours are compared option by option, with prices.
Walks and parks
The Rapaki Hillside Walk is the best short walk in town, a loop over farmland with views back over Martinborough and out across the valley. It takes about an hour.
Considine Park on Princess Street is 6.47 hectares of open grass with the town swimming pool, a camping ground and equestrian facilities, and it is the easiest place in town to let children run. Closer in, the playground next to the Waihinga Centre on the Square has swings and a flying fox.
Martinborough with children
Children do well in Martinborough: a playground on the Square, the town pool at Considine Park in summer, pedal carts built for families and a farm where they can feed the animals.
The playground beside the Waihinga Centre has swings and a flying fox, and Knucklebone Coffee Bar in the same building means the adults get a coffee while the children play. It is open from 9am to 3.30pm and closed on Wednesdays. The library is next door when it rains.
Indi Bikes' four-wheeled cycles seat a family of up to six, which makes a flat vineyard loop with small children possible, and the dog can come in a trailer. For something with animals, Martinborough Manor on Cromarty Drive runs guided farm visits where children feed the animals and learn how the farm works. Bill and Penelope, who run it, also grow flowers.
Golf, spa and a slower day
Not every hour here needs a wine glass. The golf club, a country day spa and a yoga studio cover the rest.
You can book a treatment and the heated indoor pool at the day spa at Brackenridge, out on White Rock Road, without staying the night. On Lake Ferry Road, Love & Core runs Pilates and yoga classes and offers hot stone massage and reflexology.
Rainy days and evenings
When it rains, the Circus Cinema, the museum at weekends, Ventana's workshops and a long lunch are the answer. After dinner, the town has a pub, two late bars and a wine bar.
The Pukemanu on the Square is the country pub, with pool, darts and the rugby on the big screen.
For cocktails in retro booths, Cool Change stays open until 1am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It is closed on Mondays. Mesita on Ohio Street is a small wine bar with a short menu of fried chicken, ceviche and steak frites, closed Monday and Tuesday.
Weeknights are quiet. Several kitchens close early in the week, so check before you walk out on a Monday or Tuesday evening, or plan the cinema and a pizza.
Worth the drive: the south coast
South of town, Lake Ferry, the Putangirua Pinnacles and Cape Palliser make a full day out, and you need a car. The road is sealed most of the way, narrow and winding in places, and the last stretch to the lighthouse is gravel.
The Lake Ferry Hotel, 32.8 kilometres south-west of Martinborough in a straight line, sits where Lake Onoke meets Palliser Bay and is the lunch stop on this loop. The spit between the lake and the sea is the thing to walk, and it is exposed: when the southerly blows, you will feel it.
The Putangirua Pinnacles, 32.3 kilometres south-west, are tall eroded rock columns that stood in for the Paths of the Dead in The Lord of the Rings. The tracks through them have been closed after slips in the past, so check the Department of Conservation's page for the current status before you plan the day around them.
At the end of the road, the red-and-white Cape Palliser Lighthouse, 45.9 kilometres south-south-west, stands at the southern tip of the North Island at the top of about 250 steps. Just before it, the fur seal colony hauls out on the rocks beside the road. Stay at least 20 metres away from them. On the way you pass Ngawi, the fishing village where bulldozers launch the boats off the beach.
Take food and water for the day. This is remote coast, and the drive to the lighthouse and back is a long one.
Worth the drive: north up the valley
Greytown is 15.5 kilometres north of Martinborough in a straight line, and Stonehenge Aotearoa is 16.6 kilometres north-east. Both make an easy half-day.
Greytown's main street is longer than anything in Martinborough, lined with shops, cafés and the Cobblestones heritage village. If you like browsing, a day up the road in Greytown pairs well with a morning of tastings here. Stonehenge Aotearoa is a working stone circle aligned to the southern sky, with guided tours that mix astronomy, history and Māori star knowledge.
Featherston, 16.4 kilometres north-west, is where the train from Wellington stops, and where the bus to Martinborough meets it. Carterton, 22.6 kilometres north-north-east, is further up the valley on the way to Masterton, 34.1 kilometres north-north-east.
Free things to do in Martinborough
A surprising amount costs nothing. The Rapaki Hillside Walk, the Square, Considine Park and the playground are free, and so is a wander along Kitchener Street to look in the shop windows.
The Martinborough Fair charges no entry on its two Saturdays, and the Jazz in Martinborough weekend in September includes free performances. On a fine evening, a takeaway from one of the shops around the Square eaten under the trees costs the price of the food and nothing more. The only thing that reliably costs money here is the wine, and even then many cellar doors waive the tasting fee if you buy a bottle.
A weekend in Martinborough
Two nights is about right. One full day on the Terrace and one for either the coast or Greytown, with the evenings on the Square.
Arrive on Friday afternoon and walk to The Good Way for a glass before dinner, since it closes at 7pm. On Saturday, pick up bikes from Green Jersey when it opens at 9.30am, start with a guided tasting at Ata Rangi, ride on to Poppies for lunch before 4pm, and be back in the village for the museum, which closes at 2.30pm, or the brewery, which pours until 8pm. The Circus Cinema opens at 3pm if the weather turns.
On Sunday, walk the Rapaki track early while it is cool, then either drive south to Cape Palliser or north to Greytown. Before you leave, Martinborough Wine Merchants on Kitchener Street, open 9.30am to 6pm every day, stocks most of the local labels, so you can buy the bottles you did not want to carry on the bike.
When to come
February to April has the most settled weather, and harvest runs through March and April. October to December brings the long evenings and the big events.
The two busiest days of the year are the Martinborough Fair, on Saturday 6 February and Saturday 6 March 2027, when about 450 to 500 stalls fill the Square and the streets around it. Toast Martinborough is on Saturday 14 November 2026 at The Runholder and has sold out. Jazz in Martinborough and a classical music festival fill September, and a classic car weekend arrives in January. The year's festivals are set out month by month.
On those weekends nearly every bed in town books out months ahead, so sort somewhere to stay before anything else. On an ordinary weekend in March, you can wander in on a Saturday morning and find a table.
Getting here is part of the plan. The drive from Wellington crosses the Remutaka Hill, and without a car it is a train to Featherston and a bus. The train and bus from Wellington connect within minutes at weekends and on weekday evenings, and the last weekday bus back to the train leaves mid-afternoon, which is worth knowing before you book.
Frequently asked questions
Published September 20, 2026
