SEDUCED BY SONOMA

Ravaged by wildfires in October 2017, the Sonoma Valley was lucky its wineries emerged largely unscathed

WORDS CRAIG BRIGHT

n intense jet of flame bursts into life a few feet A above my head with a deafening roar. As a wave of heat blankets my entire left side I begin, slowly, to rise up off the ground. It’s just past 6am and, amid the morning twilight, a lone hot-air balloon rises into the sky above the Sonoma Skypark in California with me and five other people huddled inside its wicker basket. Drifting with the rising air currents, we’re given stunning views over the towns, hills and famed wineries of the Sonoma Valley. But after about half an hour, our pilot directs our gaze below to a small plot of land atop a hill, upon which sits an empty swimming pool and the bare outlines of what was once a sizeable…

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Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Edition (Digital) - 1 Issue, January - February 2019

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