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Planning a Wine Country Idyll?

California's Wine Regions Are Just a Click Away WineCountry.Com Offers Online Oenophiles One-Stop Travel Planning

Nearly ten million people visit California's famed wine regions each year, eager to visit winery tasting rooms, dine in casually elegant restaurants, relax in luxurious B&B inns and resorts, and enjoy the potpourri of sun-drenched activities Wine Country has to offer.

But how to plan for such a trip without making endless long-distance phone calls, buying expensive guide books, or paying big bucks to a travel agent?

The answer is www.WineCountry.com , a portal website linking a network of regional travel destination sites, including www.napavalley.com , www.sonoma.com , www.mendocino.winecountry.com , www.monterey.winecountry.com , www.santacruz.winecountry.com, www.santabarbara.winecountry.com and www.sanluisobispo.winecountry.com . Each site offers comprehensive, clickable listings of wineries, lodgings, restaurants, recreational activities (golf, spas, biking, hot air-balloon rides, etc.), cultural attractions, and special events, as well as information on weather, shopping, transportation, and such tidbits as how to book a limo tour, where to go skydiving, and which wineries host weddings.

"The WineCountry.com network offers one-stop shopping for people planning trips to California's premier wine regions," says Carolyn Lewis, WineCountry.com's sales and marketing director. "It provides a wealth of information that helps travelers save both time and money. Close to four million people visit our sites annually, so we know we're helping facilitate many wonderful wine country vacations."

WineCountry.com is operated by FreeRun Technologies ( www.freerun.com ), a Napa, California company that was instrumental in introducing the Internet to the California wine industry during the early 1990s, designing and hosting many of its first websites. Early clients included leading Napa Valley wineries such as Robert Mondavi, Beringer, Sterling, Sutter Home and St. Supery.

FreeRun launched NapaValley.com in 1994, subsequently developing the WineCountry.com network of regional sites. The company also offers a variety of Internet services to wine country businesses, including website design and implementation, web hosting and maintenance, and turnkey e-commerce, e-marketing, and other web-based business solutions.

Edited by Dave Shultz

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