Food and wine just seem to have gone out of focus. This experience has been beyond incredible...emotional, uplifting, trying, exhausting, rewarding, challenging, terrifying, and wonderful. If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd be a dad after Georgia barely squeaked out a win against South Carolina- where I was drinking 32 oz. mugs of beer quickly to bring the Dawgs "good luck"- and I would've looked at you squarely in your 8 eyes, laughed, said [gibberish], and tripped over my own feet as I went for a hug...upon which I would then try to fight you.

Not that this anecdote is indicative of how I live my life, but I just can't see myself with this level of responsibility. One of the critical things that gives me strength is my family and my friends. While I'm so appreciative of all the great folks who have touched our lives thoughout the years offering their wishes, I was absolutely floored by the caring and support of- essentially- complete strangers...otherwise known as the folks I've met through Twitter and Facebook. Though many of these folks I've gone on to meet in person and build friendships, Heather and I can't fathom that people from coast to coast knew about our pending parenthood, and were there to offer encouragement. Some, like Ben at Vinotology, even wrote posts to toast our new baby. Unbelievable. Ben lives in West Texas, and I've never met him, but I don't think it's far-fetched to call the guy a friend.

For this reason, while many forms of electronic communication can be impersonal, I think social media bucks the trend. If anything, it seems to only encourage personal contact, rather than limit it. I'll be meeting Ben, along with hundreds of other "virtual" friends, at the Wine Bloggers' Conference in Washington in a few weeks. Frankly, I would have little interest in leaving my beautiful baby daughter and miracle of a wife to hang out with a bunch of strangers. But, through building relationships via social platforms (and bolstered by the response this past week), I just look at the event as getting together with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while. Cyberspace, bringing real people together in real life. Doesn't sound impersonal to me at all.

To all of you who I've connected with- both online and in person- I extend a very heartfelt thank you.

Oh, and speaking of the conference, I've got a lot of work to do. Helping mediate a panel with Vinotology's Ben and Andrew of Wine Soiree. Got a lot of ideas almost hashed out, but they're currently lost somewhere in a pile of sleep deprivation, poop-laden diapers, yet-to-be sanitized milk bottles, and deep love and satisfaction. I hope to find them soon and put on the best show I possibly can...

...worst-case, I have about a million pictures that I'll use to lull the crowd to sleep. And then I will yell at them for taking sleep for granted.

Whatever the case, wine's taken the role of John Oates to food's Darryl Hall. The mustache cannot be ignored, but the lyrical prowess is relegated to the background. There's been a very good, incredibly overdone (at least on this blog) reason for this perhaps disturbing phenomenon: pregnancy. While in the past, opening and perhaps finishing a bottle of wine a couple times a week was not uncommon, my crippled drinking buddy has made this guy think twice about popping a cork, especially if the contents within will not stand up to a few days of exposure. Then, flash forward to the past few weeks, when I cannot take the risk of having that second nip of wine, or whatever amount would compromise my ability to drive to the hospital at the drop of a hat or the shave of a sweet mustache. I can't go for that (no can do).

So, while my access to wine hasn't come to a screeching halt, it is limited to wines that will last for 4 days, or soirees with friends (though- incidentally- friends aren't knocking down your door to party when you've taken on the metamorphosis from mirthful gadabouts to suburbanite baby-churners). However, we all need to eat, and tasty foods have filled that wine-shaped hole, hopefully slaking your thirst for consumption-centric entertainment.

To this end, I present ribs:

("Muggy" is a word that has to do with humidity, California)

It was sticky. A day you would choose to spend in the cool embrace of a swimming pool, or inside, taking advantage of the modern convenience of air conditioning, which brought the South into the modern age.

So, why were we standing outside, amidst not only the ambient heat and humidity, but tenfold expelled from the crawfish pot and burner. Madness.

But, a wives' tale says blue crabs are good to induce labor. And with Your Dekalb Farmers' Market offering live dungeness crabs, we figured the blues' bigger cousins might expedite the process...

...so, it's 12:45 AM, and no baby yet. However, the wife is feeling weird. At the very least, it was a darn good meal:

My best excuse is that cooking for a pregnant wife not only limits the food you can prepare, but severely cripples the efforts by the household to drink a bottle of wine, thus damaging the odds of opening a bottle in the first place, as said bottle is now more vulnerable to waste and spoilage. It's a terrible excuse, I know, but I've got to plead some sort of pathetic case here.

Now you- the attractive and astute readership- have no time for my alibis, and frankly, you're probably tired of me talking about babies. So, with that directive in mind, I concocted perhaps my favorite "classic" pairing on earth.

Oysters and bubbly (in this case, Champagne) might be the finest set of bedfellows since, well, since the last time someone used the word "bedfellows" in the modern written word. Granted, Champagne and much sparkling wine is notorious for being a fast-friend with food (due to high acid, freshness, and the palate-cleansing virtue of fizz). However, for some reason, I can't think about anything else to even compare with some oysters. Yeah, that includes beer. I don't believe I'm even saying this. But dammit, with all due respect to beer, IT'S THE TRUTH. I'd bet my crappy plating abilities on it.

In the case of this particular post, the oyster employed was Long Island's famed Blue Point. While much of my experience (being from Georgia) is with either Apalachicola Oysters or Gulf Oysters, I went with the Blue Points because, well, that's all that they had. And I suspect that I won't be getting any Gulf Oysters anytime soon. I bite my thumb at you, BP.

Anyway, I decided to toss these beauties on the grill for a few minutes, rather than eat them raw. The latter is usually the most common form of consumption (which I enjoy), but something about heating these up just until the briny juices within them bubble and the shells pop open, allowing some of the smoke from the fire to permeate the meat...[Homer drooling noises]. And yes, it is that simple. Put the oysters on the grill. When the shells open (after 4-8 minutes), dinner is served. If they don't open, don't eat 'em. They skip across ponds quite nicely in that case.

For the bubbles, I ended up with a half bottle (375 ml) of Laurent-Perrier NV Brut L-P Champagne. The "NV" stands for "non vintage", and what that means is that the final product in my bottle is a combination of wine from possibly several different years. This is done so that the producer can create a consistent flavor profile for the wine year-after-year (known in Champagne as the "house style"). Since the inconsistent weather patterns vary season-to-season, sometimes the blending needs to be tweaked to maintain the house style. Master blenders- aka "folks much more talented than me"- undertake the painstaking task of tasting samples from many different barrels of wine from the respective year, as well as previous years. Furthermore, they taste Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays and Pinot Meuniers (the three allowable grapes in the Champagne AOC). This process is known as assemblage, and I bet I would suck at it.

Laurent-Perrier's "house style" is lighter than many other Champagnes, much of that perhaps due to the fact that they use mostly Chardonnay. I chose the lighter-styled sparkler because I think it worked great with the delicate brininess of the oysters. And the blue-blooded blue point oysters seemed to be more delicate and briny than the blue-collared gulf oysters I usually find fried in my po boy. The mineral elements in the wine- likely attributed to the chalky soils of Champagne- offered a perfect complement to the salinity of the juice, the almost-metallic flavors within the oyster meat, and the likewise minerality lent to the oyster and the juice by the shell. Furthermore, the citrusy components and the acidity of this light-bodied blubbly worked like a spritz of lemon...never a bad move on an oyster, or any seafood for that matter.

So, the richness, the acid, the minerality, the brininess...the luxurious combination of delicate seafood and delicate mousse of fizzy Champagne (or California sparkling, or Spanish Cava); all these elements working in harmony confirm why this is such a classic pairing. If you haven't tried it before, I suggest you do so this weekend. Especially if you plan on eating outside in the sultry summer (well, almost summer) evening. There just isn't much better.

And if you're looking for another food-and-wine marriage, join me here next year when I discuss classic pairings 202!