Astrolabe Wines

Astrolabe Wines Astrolabe was created in 1996, and is a culmination of a winemaking career that began in 1982.

All Simon's skill and experience combine to capture the essence of Marlborough in wines of purity, focus and elegance. Named after the ship that in 1827 charted and explored the Marlborough Coast, Astrolabe is a personal project for winemaker Simon Waghorn and his wife, Jane. Astrolabe produces a range of wines that express the purity and intensity of fruit flavours naturally afforded by the clima

te and soils of the Marlborough region. All grapes are sourced from unique Marlborough sites, carefully chosen to add complexity and completeness in the wines. Simon is fascinated by the distinctive qualities of the Marlborough sub-regions, whether bottled alone or blended as part of the Marlborough classic. All Simon’s skill and experience combine to capture the essence of Marlborough in wines of purity, focus and elegance. Website: astrolabewines.co.nz

Twitter: https://twitter.com/astrolabewines

Instagram: http://instagram.com/AstrolabeWines

10/06/2026

A peaceful morning at Astrolabe Farm vineyard, picking olives in harmony with nature… Word of the day: bacchiatura, Italian for the age old method of harvesting by beating a tree with a stick. Our olive harvest always signals the start of winter in Marlborough. We have a small grove of organically grown olives beside our vineyard, with a mix of Manzanilla, Barnea, Frantoio, Leccino and Pendolino. Olive oil was mainly just made for the family, but with the opening of our it is now our house olive oil in our tasting room and wine bar.

As it turns to Winter, it’s a great time to look back on the recent harvest and consider the wines that we have made. We...
02/06/2026

As it turns to Winter, it’s a great time to look back on the recent harvest and consider the wines that we have made. We have just been blending our 2026 Sauvignon blancs, and the quality of the vintage is looking high, with classic character being delivered by each sub-region. For our Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, we first start with a geographical impulse putting together a cross section of Marlborough that roughly represents the diversity of terroir available to us using the many component wines we have made, with vineyards divided into component blocks and separately vinified. The challenge is then to beat the basic blend, making small adjustments in the relative position of different vineyards and blocks, fine-tuning the proportion of a given wine in the blend, to produce a wine that is familiarly an Astrolabe style, that works with the best of the vintage and integrates into a seamless whole. As well as these larger blends, we also work with many small parcels at our Small Town Winery, including our classic single vineyard wines and the two newest additions to our range. This year Arabella has a project for her .nz series of wines which is currently maturing in barrel.

To hear our reflections on the harvest, sign up for our mailing list (link in bio) for our quarterly seasonal report, which we will be sending out soon. You can also view previous newsletters on our website.

📸: by Arabella of the 2026 harvest at Astrolabe Farm.

Chardonnay is where it all began for Astrolabe. Simon’s first wine for Astrolabe was a single vineyard Chardonnay with f...
21/05/2026

Chardonnay is where it all began for Astrolabe. Simon’s first wine for Astrolabe was a single vineyard Chardonnay with fruit from the Inder family from their old vineyard in Grovetown. In 2005, when the Inders retired, the Waghorn family took over the farm, and it is still the heart of everything we do at Astrolabe. The last vintage that our Marlborough Chardonnay was a single vineyard Farm Chardonnay was 2011. From 2012, Simon brought in beautiful fruit from another great organic site in Marlborough and as we developed and looked to sub-regions further around the Marlborough region, Awatere valley fruit from the super cool regenerative block at the van Asch family’s Little Oasis was added in 2018. We now make two additional single vineyard Chardonnays from The Farm and Wrekin and release them only in special vintages. Happy Chardonnay Day.

12/05/2026

New t-shirt design — behind the scenes on the story of harvest 2026. This year, a vintage fantasy t-shirt inspired design on a muted ecru t-shirt for a softer, vintage look and feel. Screenprinted by the artisans in a beautifully faded colour palette, transporting us to a magical world of ents, orcs, elves and giant waxeyes. As always, it features small illustrations of our adventuring band on their quest through the trials of vintage to earn their precious t-shirt. If you weren’t part of the Astrolabe fellowship for vintage 2026, they are available in our cellar door now — a great way to spend your gold.

Two new release wines just in time for  Southern Valleys Sauvignon Blanc Southern Valleys Syrah The oak-aged Sauvignon ...
30/04/2026

Two new release wines just in time for
 
Southern Valleys Sauvignon Blanc 
Southern Valleys Syrah
 
The oak-aged Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah are designed to explore the capacity of Marlborough’s Southern Valleys subregion to produce age-worthy wines of the highest quality. The Southern Valleys region is known for producing ripe, concentrated Pinot noir, but we feel it also has great potential for Syrah, and the Sauvignon blanc here delivers great concentration and persistence with a riper profile that shines with oak treatment. The quality of fruit produced by our climate and geography here in Marlborough is a gift and we feel like it’s our responsibility as Marlborough winemakers to take that fruit and keep pushing to see how we can craft it into wines of the highest possible standard so that wine drinkers can see just how special this region is. The wines will be released on 1 May 2026, Sauvignon Blanc Day, available directly from Astrolabe Wines.  

It’s almost time to reveal our harvest t-shirt for 2026! We design these in-house with a different theme each year and m...
21/04/2026

It’s almost time to reveal our harvest t-shirt for 2026! We design these in-house with a different theme each year and make a few art prints that we sell in our cellar door. The illustrations are a lot of fun to make, full of winemaking jokes and feature illustrations of the winemaking team (and Simon’s dog, Bob). We have had our first two vintages framed in bold colours by to display at our cellar door and wine bar which you can take a closer look at by swiping across.

21/04/2026

The peaceful bubbling of fermentation is filling our cellar door and barrel room at our Small Town Winery in central Blenheim. The fruit has all been picked, but now is the time for patience as the wines here go to barrel for extended maturation, and the wild ferments slowly come to a finish.

Our last pick for vintage 2026 was Albariño from the Kēkerengū Coast. The last fruit into the winery called for a little...
13/04/2026

Our last pick for vintage 2026 was Albariño from the Kēkerengū Coast. The last fruit into the winery called for a little celebration. Everything has now been pressed and gone into barrel or steel for fermentation and maturation. Just a few of the later ripening varieties like Riesling, Syrah and Albariño are still in the early stages of fermentation, and a lot of the hard work and long days is over. 
 
Pictured: Stephen weighing the bins of hand-picked fruit with a glass of champagne. Simon finally sitting back with a glass of champagne. May first loading the press... and then having a glass of champagne.

Pinot noir is one of the first grapes to come in to our little winery at the start of the season. We keep a keen eye on ...
21/03/2026

Pinot noir is one of the first grapes to come in to our little winery at the start of the season. We keep a keen eye on ripeness, trying to hit the sweet spot beyond green tannins but before raisining and loss of fruit vibrancy. This picture taken by Arabella while sampling at is the Abel clone Pinot noir. After we destem, we cold soak the fruit for colour extraction, and when wild fermentation begins, we plunge the cap by hand to manage extraction levels throughout the ferment and maintain good ferment health.

We’ve been bringing a few parcels of Chardonnay into our Astrolabe Small Town Winery. To make room for this year’s ferme...
19/03/2026

We’ve been bringing a few parcels of Chardonnay into our Astrolabe Small Town Winery. To make room for this year’s fermentation, we have emptied out our ovoid Taransaud foudre, which contained our Farm Chardonnay 2025 aging on lees for 12 months. It has been racked to puncheon for a little further aging before bottling, and accumulated tartrates were cleared out of the foudre (from the inside!) before refilling with some Chardonnay from the Wrekin vineyard.

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197 Rapaura Road
Blenheim

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+6435776794

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