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Marlborough Wine & Food Festival
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New Zealand's longest-running wine festival, held annually among the vines at Brancott Estate since 1985. Over 40 Marlborough wineries and local food producers set up in the vineyard, with live music and cooking demonstrations. The definitive celebration of the world's Sauvignon Blanc capital.
~8,000 visitors
Blenheim Airport (BHE)
12-14 February 2026
Second Saturday of February
$55 - $75
The Marlborough Wine & Food Festival is New Zealand's longest-running wine festival, held annually since 1985 among the vines at the historic Brancott Estate vineyard outside Blenheim. More than forty Marlborough wineries and a curated mix of regional food producers set up across a single Saturday in early February — peak New Zealand summer — with live music, cooking demonstrations, and the producer stands arranged across the vineyard lawn. The capped attendance is eight thousand.
Marlborough is the world's most commercially important Sauvignon Blanc region by output, producing more than three quarters of all New Zealand wine and defining the international style of Sauvignon Blanc through the rise of Cloudy Bay and the broader Marlborough producer cohort since the 1980s. The festival is the year's most concentrated tasting opportunity across the regional producer mix and the single most important commercial wine day on the South Island calendar.
Why Marlborough matters
Commercial viticulture in Marlborough began in the early 1970s when Montana (now Brancott Estate) planted the first large-scale modern vineyards in the Wairau Valley. The region's combination of long sunshine hours, cool nights, and free-draining gravel soils proved exceptional for Sauvignon Blanc, and within two decades Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc had become a globally recognised style — pungently aromatic, high-acid, with the green-herb and tropical-fruit profile that has come to define international expectations of the variety.
The region has since diversified meaningfully. Pinot Noir is the second most-planted variety and produces serious wines from the Southern Valleys sub-region. Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Riesling, and small amounts of méthode-traditionnelle sparkling wine complete the producer portfolio. The leading estates — Cloudy Bay, Brancott Estate, Villa Maria, Saint Clair, Greywacke, Fromm, Seresin — all participate in the festival, alongside the smaller boutique producers that the region's scale tends to obscure in international markets.
The Brancott Estate venue and the festival format
Brancott Estate sits about ten minutes south of Blenheim in the Wairau Valley, on the original Montana vineyard plantings from the 1970s. The festival uses the vineyard lawn and the surrounding cellar door grounds — a single open-air space large enough to host the eight thousand attendees comfortably but compact enough that the producer stands remain walkable end to end in fifteen minutes. The setting itself — vineyard rows rising up to the Wither Hills on the horizon — is a meaningful part of the festival's appeal.
The format is a single-day Saturday event running roughly from late morning to early evening, with a wristband that includes access to all producer stands. Individual pours are purchased with festival tokens at each stand. Food producers operate alongside the wine stands on the same token system. Multiple stages run live music across the day. The single-day, single-venue format is the festival's defining feature compared to multi-day distributed events like Toast Martinborough.
Tickets, the sellout cycle, and how to actually get in
Ticket prices sit in the NZ$55–75 range per person, including the wristband and festival access. Tickets typically go on sale in October or November for the February event, with mailing-list subscribers given an early-access window. The festival has a hard attendance cap and the ticket allocation has consistently sold out in advance in recent years, though the format is less squeezed than the smaller Toast Martinborough — Marlborough's eight thousand cap is more accommodating than Wairarapa's nine thousand-on-a-smaller-village format.
For visitors who want to combine the festival weekend with deeper producer access, the realistic move is to book a Thursday or Friday evening tasting at one of the boutique producers — Fromm and Seresin both run pre-booked cellar visits for small groups and are open through the festival week. The same producers will be pouring at the festival itself on the Saturday but are noticeably more available for in-depth conversation in their own cellars on the days before the crowd arrives.
Getting there and where to stay
Blenheim has its own regional airport (BHE) with daily connections to Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch; flying in via the Wellington connection is the standard approach for international visitors arriving via the North Island. The alternative is the InterIslander ferry from Wellington to Picton (three hours), followed by a thirty-minute drive south to Blenheim, which is a more scenic option and the standard route for South Island road-trip itineraries.
Blenheim accommodation during the festival weekend is fully booked many months in advance and prices roughly double. The realistic alternatives are Picton (thirty minutes north, the ferry port), Renwick (ten minutes west, a smaller village in the heart of the Wairau Valley vineyards), or a vineyard cottage at one of the larger estates. Renwick is the most atmospheric base for a wine-focused trip and has multiple cellar-door restaurants and small inns; Picton works for visitors combining the festival with a South Island road trip starting from the ferry.
Pair the festival with the wider South Island
February in Marlborough is peak New Zealand summer with long warm days, reliably dry weather, and the vineyards approaching veraison. The festival is itself only one day, but the realistic minimum trip length is at least four days — arriving Thursday, doing cellar visits Friday at boutique producers in the Southern Valleys and Awatere sub-regions, the festival Saturday, and a quieter follow-up Sunday at the producers flagged during the festival itself. The Marlborough Sounds — the famously photogenic drowned-river coastline immediately north — is the natural day-extension option for non-wine activities.
For visitors combining Marlborough with the wider South Island, the natural extensions are south to the cooler Waipara Valley and the Pegasus Bay producers (three hours by car), or further south to Central Otago (six hours by car through the Southern Alps, for New Zealand's most respected Pinot Noir region). Combining Marlborough with Central Otago across a seven-to-ten-day South Island wine trip is the standard itinerary for serious New Zealand wine visitors. Our Marlborough guide has the cellar door logistics and a recommended trip plan built around the festival weekend.
Where it is
Blenheim, New Zealand
Official Website
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When is Marlborough Wine & Food Festival held?
From 12 February 2026 to 14 February 2026.
Where does Marlborough Wine & Food Festival take place?
Marlborough Wine & Food Festival is held in Blenheim, New Zealand.
How much does it cost to attend Marlborough Wine & Food Festival?
Tickets range from NZD 55 to NZD 75.
How many people attend Marlborough Wine & Food Festival?
Approximately ~8,000 visitors attend each edition.
What's the nearest airport to Marlborough Wine & Food Festival?
The nearest airport is Blenheim Airport (BHE).
Who is Marlborough Wine & Food Festival best for?
Best for wine enthusiasts, foodies, couples and collectors.