Sonja arrived home Thursday with the burgers and tomatoes I had asked for. I had also mentioned grabbing some steaks. When I saw she had purchased three pounds of filet mignon at the cost of nearly a third of a car payment, I wasn’t happy. I made that known. But hey, we have some great steaks to look forward to, and I made two of them the following night.

My wife is many things. She is beautiful. She is extremely intelligent. She is patient. She is thoughtful almost to a fault — “deliberative” she calls it. She is a hard worker. She is talented. She is caring. She is intuitive. She is sexy. She is good at many things. Most of all, she’s an amazing mom. Knowing her as I do now, sometimes I laugh to myself about when we met. She was so quiet, almost shy, that I wasn’t even sure she liked me. I literally had to ask if she wanted to go out again, because I couldn’t discern from her body language if she’d had fun during our six-hour-long first date. I’ve also had friends of mine ask me if she liked them before. Of course she does; she just isn’t terribly expressive. So now, after five years and some change, knowing her well, I laugh to think that there was a time that I knew none of these things. It’s amazing what can happen over time. I sure do love my wife.

I got over my frustration with the steaks pretty quickly when I saw the beautiful, thick cuts of Nebraska beef. Excited to be grilling again after a long winter, I also threw some corn on the grill and some red potatoes and onions in the grill basket. To celebrate getting through another long week, I snagged a bottle of wine from our last trip to wine country, this Schug Cab Sauv 2012.

Schug isn’t a winery we were very familiar with before we went, but our friends at Robledo recommended them. We enjoyed our visit to the quaint little tasting room a great deal, and since then I’ve seen their wines popping up all over Omaha, available in more and more establishments that I frequent. This Cab Sauv is sort of the textbook take on Sonoma Cab; it’s refined, flavorful, but completely unimposing. I got underripe purple  fruits, hints of juniper, and mild herbaceous qualities on it. Though I prefer huge Napa Cabs, this is more Sonja’s style of wine, and it paired beautifully with our steaks. I recommend this one.

“You know,” I told my wonderful wife over dinner, while nearby our son happily munched on corn and his sister slept, “two eight-ounce filets and a bottle of wine this good would cost us $150 in a restaurant.”

“See?” she said, smiling at me from across the table. “I saved us money!”

I smiled in return, and we continued to eat. A few moments later, I took a sip of the wine, which had by now been decanting for well over an hour.

“This wine reminds me of you,” I told her.

“It’s complicated?” she guessed.

“No,” I responded, “It takes quite a while to open up, but once it does I really like it.”

My wife’s beautiful smile was all the response I needed.

Cheers,