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What is California Wine Hikes? Well it’s exactly what the name says!

California Wine Hikes is a website offering guided hikes, wine tastings, fine dining & accommodations in the California wine country. The primary angle of the site is as a wine country vacation destination. The thing is, the destination changes depending on what type of vacation you want.

Russ Beebe, the founder of the business, has found what I think is a spectacular niche involving vacations, hiking and, my favorite, wine! California Wine Hikes is actually a tour company that allows Russ to combine hiking and wine tasting. The company currently offers 19 different tours ranging from EASY to STRENUOUS hiking levels and the opportunity to take in spectacular scenery and excellent wines.

As I perused the site I found one tour in particular that caught my eye: Romp Through the Redwoods. Having always wanted to see the great Redwoods I can tell you that when I do I will do it through Russ and California Wine Hikes! For a very reasonable price you can enjoy a moderate level hike and visit a local winery when you’re through.

Here’s an excerpt of the tour description:

One-Day Hike & Wine-Tasting Tour: 8 moderate mi., 1000′ elev. gain
Hiking a loop through this mystical Santa Cruz Mountain watershed differs from other, more modern San Francisco Bay Area hiking locales. It’s easy to see why the unmaintained character of this place, with its many downed trees and ungraded slopes, can make this loop hike one of the more rugged hikes in the area. Which, for many who have come to know me, is precisely why it’s one of my favorite places to take my winehiking guests.

If one of the existing tours doesn’t fit your style or timing or budget Russ gives you the option to customize your very own California Wine Hike. Bring a small group of friends or family (or both) and enjoy each other’s company as well as a great vacation with California Wine Hikes.

In addition to the normal business angle Russ has a great blog on his site as well. There are tasting notes, wine reviews, tasting venues, winehiker trails and information about reviewing his site, California Wine Hikes where if you do a review you have a chance at winning a case of really good wine.

Incidentally, he’s also running a promotion right now where you can win a bottle of 2004 Dominus Estate just by signing up to the RSS feed. The exciting thing about it is that if Russ grows his list to over 600 subscribers the winner will get 6 bottles instead of 1! Contain your excitement though as from what I can tell the current number of public subscribers is 35. Quite a ways to go yet.

Technically speaking I really like the site and the fabulous promotion ideas Russ has. It’s obvious to me that in addition to his primary business of wine hikes Russ has a good handle on SEO and blog promotion. I also think that California Wine Hikes is a perfect example of niche marketing. In today’s environment where everyone is trying to find some unique niche to market to Russ seems to have hit a home run.

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