The Marlborough Museum: From Maori Beginnings to Wine Country

Behind the cellar doors…

Pulling on a large metal ring of the shabby cellar doors, we walk into a corridor lined with luxurious display cases dedicated to certain famous Marlborough wine brands, including a few we visited on our winery-hopping bike tour we did the other day. From brand new wine menus to old bottle designs, there are lots of little wine memorabilia to look at. At the end of the “wine cellar” are a case of barrels showing the different uses and parts of the classic wine barrel. Did you know you can fit a man in one? (Yep, there is a poor model of a sailor living in one).

From aromas to pesky bugs

The wine cellar is just the beginning of the Marlborough Museum’s wine exhibition. Now we enter an open room filled with different features, from seeing differences in soil that produce the different aromas found in Marlborough’s sauvignon blanc to actually smelling these aromas in some snouts sticking out of the wall. (Man, they smell gooood!) You can learn all about Marlborough’s humble wine-making history all the way to how large commercial wine operations produce the wine today. If you really want to go into greater detail, learn about the outbreak of phylloxera, a wine-makers worst nightmare, complete with a mechanical insect moving about on the wall.

Learning about the ecosystem of Marlborough to wine heritage

The earliest settlement in New Zealand

A carved archway at the end of the wine industry’s story indicates that we are now moving into the Maori exhibition, Te Pokohiwi. Maori history and artifacts always fascinate us when we see them displayed in various museums throughout New Zealand, but this exhibition especially significant as in covers the settlement of Wairau Bar, the earliest settlement site in New Zealand dating back to 1300! The floor is lit up with shimmering blue lights in the shape of the Wairau River and its many estuaries from source to mouth. Then our attention is drawn to three large wooden waka (canoes) in the centre of the room.

Tools, jewellery, weapons, clothing, and more have been excavated and fill up the display cases. We perhaps spend the most time in this room looking at the relics from the indigenous culture’s fascinating past.

Europeans come to Marlborough

After the early Polynesian settlers came the Europeans in Marlborough lead by the first landings in the Marlborough Sound by Captain James Cook. You will hear lots of stories about this fella throughout New Zealand, as he is the reason there is such a British influence here in New Zealand. A small display case covers his story with a model of his ship, The Endeavour. Then we move onto the 1820s and the whaling history in Marlborough with relics, such as whaling weapons and whale jaw bones.