Turn into Jacksons Road, and you arrive at our Homestead Vineyard, where the tasting room sits amongst the vines with the working winery beside it. If you only have room in your day for two or three cellar doors in Marlborough, we would love this to be one of them. Come for the wines, especially our Pinot Noir. Stay for the stories behind them, told by the team who know them best. We reopen on Tuesday 3 November 2026.
Tasting amongst the vines
Settle in with the mountains on the horizon and the Homestead Vineyard stretching out in front of you. Look past the rows and you'll spot the Grey Ghost, a gum tree planted in 1867 that towers over the vines. It's the same tree on the label of the wine in your glass. Wander down to it after your tasting, if you like.
These are the vines where Jackson Estate began. Adam Jackson bought the land in 1855, more than a decade before the Grey Ghost was planted, and the first vines went in here in 1990.
The tasting room was designed by Brian Massey, art director of The Hobbit trilogy, and opened in 2017. The tasting room's rustic façade is built from reclaimed materials, and on a miserable day you can take your seat inside, in the space we renovated with Little & Fox over the winter of 2026 so that it now reflects the building's exterior.
Wines you won't taste everywhere
Plenty of people go wine tasting for the setting, and we understand why. The bigger reason to stop at Jackson Estate is what's in the glass: we make wines that offer a wider variety than you may have tasted before, and you'll notice it most in our Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc.
Pinot Noir from fresh to aged
Pinot Noir is our great love, and a tasting here is a chance to dig deeper into the variety and see one estate's Pinot from fresh through to aged. We make five styles, from the earlier-drinking Homestead through the Somerset and Gum Emperor single-vineyard wines to our flagship Vintage Widow, with the Abel single clone among our library wines, which is unusual for a Marlborough producer. If the Abel catches your interest, there is more in our article on the Abel clone.
As Matt Patterson-Green, our head winemaker, puts it, "We make it to age." Our Pinot reaches you young but in perfect drinking condition, full of bright red fruit, and over the following five, ten, fifteen or twenty years it settles into something supple and layered, with leather, cigar box, earthiness, and dark berry coming through and a long finish. Our Vintage Widow spends three to four years in bottle with us before it's released. We have written more about how our Pinot Noir develops with age, if you would like to read it before you visit.
The vineyards are where that ageing starts. Some of the oldest vines in Marlborough grow on our estate, and our main Pinot Noir vineyard sits in the Waihopai Valley on heavy clay soils, where vines more than 30 years old are tended by hand. The leaves around the fruit are plucked so the bunches see sun and wind, each shoot carries a single bunch of small, concentrated berries, and every bunch is hand-picked. Marlborough's climate then gives the wine a brightness that helps it age and gives it presence in the glass.
Sauvignon Blanc in three more styles
The Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc most people know and love is young, fresh and aromatic, with passionfruit, gooseberry and sometimes cut grass, and our own three Sauvignon Blancs show you the other styles the grape can take. Stich comes from vines now well over 30 years old, and that age lends it a more grown-up style of white peach, white nectarine, and citrus, with more texture. The Somerset single vineyard, made only in some years, comes from a Bordeaux clone not commonly planted in Marlborough. We let it ferment on wild yeast for character and texture, then it rests on its lees and is held in the winery for 16 months before we bottle it.
Our third, Grey Ghost, shares its name with that gum tree. It comes from a select block of older vines and is treated much like a Chardonnay: whole-bunch pressed and wild-fermented in French oak, then bottle-aged for two to three years before release. Matt calls it "a winemaker's wine". He explains how all three sit alongside the classic style in our piece on the four styles of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.
Time to taste properly
Every Jackson Estate tasting is booked, which gives our team the time to sit with you and keep your tasting focused on the wine and the place. There are three ways to taste with us.
If you would rather go at your own pace, the self-guided tasting lets you choose four wines and work through them using our tasting notes. If you would like to hear the story behind each glass, a guided tasting with one of our team members takes you through a selection of Jackson Estate wines.
Then there is the Cave, beneath the tasting room. It is a tasting of the key wines in our range, led by our team and, when he is available, by Matt, the winemaker himself.
What you'll take home
Leave with a sense of how Marlborough Pinot Noir evolves with age, a Sauvignon Blanc that surprises you, and a bottle to take home.
Ready to visit? Head to our tasting room page to book your Jackson Estate wine tasting in Marlborough. We look forward to welcoming you.
