Wine Imbiber® is a blog dedicated to wine and food, offering advice and recommendations for enhancing your enjoyment of wine and food and entertaining your friends and loved ones. It is a collaborative effort between Rich and Leah, a married couple living in wine–affluent California. They officially launched this blog on their 24th wedding anniversary, after many years of enjoying great wine and food. Having four kids hasn’t deterred them from their endless pursuit of epicurean indulgence.

Our wine imbibing began with our first wine tasting experience in Temecula, California, before we were married. That was the closest wine region to where we lived at the time. It was pretty much two dirt roads with as many wineries back then, but we enjoyed the experience enough to include a trip to Napa Valley during our honeymoon. This was back when you didn’t need reservations to get into the infamous French Laundry restaurant, but we unfortunately didn’t think enough of its name to bother eating there. Oh well. Live and learn. Four kids and countless wineries and restaurants later, we are still on the search for the next hot winery, restaurant or recipe. Even though there are more mouths involved now (in the food aspect, anyway), we still manage to discover and experience enough new wineries and cuisine to keep us licking our lips the whole year long. Our spawn have actually become quite the foodies and have fond memories of many wineries that they have visited with us over the years.

We’ve noticed that a lot of wineries have become more family–friendly in recent years. Our kids have had encounters like lectures on the animal inhabitants of a winery while touring the grounds to sampling other vineyard–produced products (while we were peacefully enjoying our wine tasting). Yeah, that’s right. I used the words “kids”, “peacefully” and “enjoying” all in one sentence! Who’d have thought? So, whenever applicable, we’ll note the wineries that we’ve found that rank highly on the WI family–friendly index. This could mean anything from cool winery dogs to great grounds for picnicking.

The goal of Wine Imbiber is to provide practical advice and ideas to enhance your overall wine and food experience and maybe even (gasp!) impress your friends and families. Hopefully, you might learn some new things about wine (Rich’s area of expertise) or discover a unique recipe (Leah’s department) that pairs well with one of your favorite wines. The emphasis will always remain on the quick and easy crowd–pleasers we’ve discovered over the years. Since we live in California, we’ll be focusing on its many wine regions, plus nearby Oregon and Washington. We also love Italian and many other international wines and food and plan on including information we’ve collected on our ventures abroad. So sit back and enjoy!