About Us

Good food, good wine, and the art of a well-spent hour

It started more than forty years ago with a few cooking classes at our local community college. We weren’t planning a career in food. We just thought taking a cooking class sounded like a better way to spend a Tuesday night than sitting at home.

Not long after that, a friend convinced us to join a wine club. We didn’t know much about wine, but we were curious. The more we tasted, the more we wanted to know.

And one thing led to another.

We cooked. We entertained. We traveled. We tried a lot of wine and more than a few spirits. We hosted dinners with friends, discovered dishes we wanted to recreate at home, bought bottles that weren’t worth what we paid, and occasionally stumbled onto something so good that we’re still talking about it years later.

We’re Kelly and Rita, and more than forty years later, we’re still curious.

Taste Explore Live grew out of that curiosity.

It’s a place for us to share the food we cook, the wines and spirits we discover, the cocktails worth making, the places we visit, and the other things we come across that make life a little more interesting.

We’re not interested in chasing every trend or telling you what you’re supposed to like. We’d rather share what we’ve experienced—what we’ve learned, what surprised us, what we’d do differently, and what we’d happily do again.

Sometimes that’s a dish we taste at a restaurant and want to figure out at home. Sometimes it’s a bottle we’ve never tried, a cocktail that sends us down a rabbit hole, or a place we almost walked past while traveling. And sometimes it’s simply something useful, interesting, or worth knowing that we’ve discovered along the way.

We’ve learned that expensive doesn’t automatically mean better and more doesn’t automatically mean good. We care more about whether something is worth having, doing, or experiencing.

Most of all, we don’t think curiosity has an expiration date.

There’s still plenty we want to taste, places we want to explore, things we want to learn, and experiences we want to have.

That’s why we’re here.

We’re glad you’re here.

— Kelly & Rita