Platypus Wine Tours

Platypus began with a bus tour in Bruges. Don Rickard took it in 1999, on a first trip to Europe he made alone after his friends dropped out, and what stayed with him was that the guide owned his own bus and had back-door access to every place he stopped. Three years later Rickard was general manager of Market St. Helena, a Napa restaurant, spending his shifts talking to visiting tasters and to the winemakers themselves. In September 2003 he bought a used bus on eBay, got his permits, and started driving people out to backroads wineries. The conviction underneath it was anti-wine-snob: small family-owned properties instead of the tasting-bar circuit, guides who tell stories rather than lecture, and shuttles laid out with perimeter seating so strangers end up talking to each other. He later built a commercial kitchen at the Napa headquarters so the picnic lunches would be made in house. The company still runs it, with its own culinary team. Rickard's retirement was announced in December 2025; the company passed to new owners, Chad and Scott, who operate transportation companies on Oahu including Platinum Transportation and Hele Hele Shuttle.