Experience the best of Martinborough

Martinborough was laid out in the late nineteenth century by a settler who planned its streets in the pattern of a Union Jack, radiating from the central square. Today the square is edged with verandahed wooden hotels, a few shops and cafés, and low-key tasting rooms, and the flat terraces of gravel soil around the village are covered in vines.

Pinot noir is the grape the village is best known for, and many cellar doors are close enough to walk or cycle between. To the south, the road crosses the wide arc of Palliser Bay to Cape Palliser, where a red-and-white lighthouse stands above 250 steps beside a colony of fur seals, and the Putangirua Pinnacles are eroded gravel columns. Greytown and Featherston lie to the north.

Lunch in Martinborough tends to be long and local, built on Wairarapa lamb, olive oil, cheese and a glass of the village's own red. The road from Wellington climbs over the Remutaka Range before dropping into the valley, so the village feels pleasantly removed from the capital. Autumn is the time when the vines turn gold.