'Tis the weekend for champagne. Whether you are gracefully (we hope) extracting the cork from a bottle of bubbly to toast your sweetheart, or not-so-gracefully spraying it over the winning car from the races, or something in between. Of course, we've said it before--around here, there's no such thing as a bad time for champagne--it's really all in the words you use when you raise your glass!

But it's Valentine's Day, after all, and even if you aren't celebrating that particular moment, it still seems like a pretty good excuse to pour a glass of sparkling rose.

Rose champagne can be made by a couple of methods, but in any case, the result can be anything from the palest of blushes to a lovely strawberry color. You're likely to find just a hint more fruit, but it can be everywhere from dry to off-dry (dare we say almost sweet?) depending on the producer's style. It can be superbly elegant, from a French house like Moet & Chandon, or like drinking sparkli ...

NASCAR or Valentine's Day? Daytona 500 or Dom Perignon?

February--the shortest month of the year, and, some say, the worst month of the year (really, aren't we all about over winter? I swear Phil the Groundhog is curled up in his den laughing at all of us.), swings into gear with three food/wine/beer/whatever events packed into two short weeks out of its short calendar. If you love to celebrate with family and friends (or with the love of your life, who is probably on that family/friends list anyway), there are plenty of reasons to do so. Of course, we think there's probably a good reason to celebrate just about every day--celebration is less a matter of the calendar than it is a matter of the heart.

We'll spend the rest of the week mostly focusing on Valentine's Day, since if you're throwing a party for the Daytona 500, you can probably grab some good ideas from last week's football game posts (no pun intended there). On the other hand, don't wait for Valentin ...