Wine and Food Experience after final garnishes

From filling final winery spaces, adding a new flavour or decorating walls with art, the soon-to-open Marlborough Wine and Food Experience is looking for final touches.

Eager local industry-related businesses can ask developers for a trade-orientated sneak peek beneath the renovations of the newly renamed Alfred Taylor Centre next Thursday 24 July, ahead of officially opening in September.

The Alfred Taylor Centre includes the Marlborough Wine and Food Experience, exclusive tasting rooms, retail and office spaces, and a restaurant named ‘Oak and Ivy’ whose operators are remaining secret - for now.

“We’ve made the effort to ensure local wineries, food producers, hotels and hospitality providers know we’re offering a complementary avenue to show people what they are producing and have worked in closely with Destination Marlborough as well as promoting to interested industry conferences”, says Managing Director of the Wine and Food Experience, Lenny O’Connell.

“Because we’ll have the hotel, restaurant, the Experience and the Events Centre beneath us in a cutting-edge, all-in-one offering that many other towns don’t have, we’ve already found conferences are keen to come especially during the usually slower winter months for Marlborough tourism which lifts the whole region”.

“We’ve built a great spread of local suppliers who have signed on, so we’ve invited those businesses, but for those who have slipped through the cracks and believe in the opportunity we’re presenting, this is their chance”.

Within the Experience are displays of contributing wineries accompanied by experienced in-house hospitality staff trained to cellar door standards, as well as wide, rotating ranges of seafood, cheese, beer and charcuterie offerings allowing guests to build their own delicious experience of Marlborough.

September looks to be a busy month for the central Blenheim project, as building tenders and preparatory work is planned to begin for the newly consented 123-room, six-storey hotel scheduled to open in mid-2027, attached to the Alfred Taylor Centre via a skybridge.

“The announcement of the hotel alongside the Experience takes the opportunity for Marlborough to boost itself as a destination to another level and gives people reasons to spend their days, nights and money here in Marlborough” said developer Chris Thornley.

“At the start the reaction from many was “oh we’ve heard all this before”, but it was a concept we kept coming back to and have been able to execute thanks to progressive, big project thinking at the top of the Council and buy-in from Marlborough’s business community seeing the opportunity of a lifetime through with a collaborative mindset”.

The trade-limited event is ahead of the scheduled opening on September 1, with an official opening scheduled for September 18.

Email [email protected] with pitch details to RSVP.