Exchange of Realities

A while ago, A Butterfly Dreaming featured a series on interesting places to have a fight. I’d like to add to this with one that came up during my own adventures today: the vineyard.

The best part of the place is that there are multiple ways the fight could go, depending on where on the premises you’re holding your fight.

Imagine, for instance, a high-tension chase and skirmish through the rows of grapes themselves, occasionally popping up between the rows to check where the other side is and/or duck an attack, and every so often someone bursting through the vines to get to an opponent.

Consider the tasting room, so full of tactical terrain and a breeding ground for weapon improvisation. The bar or counter can serve as high ground or cover, depending on whether you stay on it or dive to the other side. One can leap over or crawl under the tables (if applicable) or set them up as barricades. As to weapons—well, we all know about wine bottles and glasses. Here and there will be urns for the parts of the wine that the tasters didn’t want to finish; what about tossing their contents into an opponent’s face, or clocking the opponent over the head with the entire urn? Have you ever considered how vicious a corkscrew can be? If it’s a winery that lets people choose a number of wines to taste, they’ll probably have something small that serves as a taste counter, but can work equally well as a projectile. Tablecloths, flowers—the possibilities are endless. Amid the chaos might be bystanders who were just there for the samples; they can add an extra element to the confusion by running, screaming, hiding behind things, maybe attempting to defend themselves, or for the particularly badass, just sitting there and continuing the tasting as if nothing is happening.

And then you get to the barrels. Just because wine hasn’t finished aging doesn’t mean it can’t be weapon-quality, and here we have racks and racks of oaken barrels that are just begging to be shoved over and rolling-log-battled on. “My Cabernets!” screams the distraught vintner, as the players and all their cheese are turned loose on his wine. Or perhaps he’s used to events like this, and either sets up his own fight to protect his precious vintage (and really, who knows better how to steer a barrel than the guy who filled them) or hides under a table and begins to calculate the prices he can get for the surviving barrels as the rest of the wine flows away. Speaking of which, where’s this wine going? Making the floor slippery, mixing with the blood, possibly ending up on or in the combatants.

And what happens after, when the fight is over, when blood and alcohol alike are drying on the floor and what is left is to pick up the pieces? Is the owner still there? Will he demand reparations? (Will he actually be able to back up said demand?) How many of the survivors are pickled by this point? How many aren’t and are about to rectify that?

You call it a wine tasting. I call it research and inspiration.