September 4, 2007

Pacific | Australia | Sydney, Hunter Valley

From Water to Wine

By Nicole Cotroneo

Wing your way from Sydney to Hunter Valley wine country.

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When you order a wine flight in Sydney, you might get more than a sampling of Shiraz. That’s because Sydney Seaplanes has just launched daily chartered trips to Hunter Valley, Australia’s oldest grape region. For around $600 per person, they’ll whisk you away from Rose Bay in Sydney Harbour for a day of vineyard tours and a three-course lunch at upscale hotspot Esca. Your winged chariot is a brand-new, 12-passenger Cessna Caravan, the largest single-engine floatplane in production. (And yes, it’s got wheels to land on a proper runway, too.)

Swooping over Sydney’s Northern Beaches, you’ll cut travel time to the valley from two hours to 30 minutes. And on the southerly return trip, you’ll fly directly over Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The service marks a modest return to the golden age of amphibious flight, when in the 30’s and 40’s Rose Bay became Australia’s first international airport, supporting gargantuan flying boats that were too large for landing strips at that time. But the best part about seaplaning it to wine country? The ample cargo space for all those cases you’ll be bringing back.