Sword Fighting and Sea Bass

Let's just sum up my evening by calling it Agecroft afore Acacia. And, really, how better to follow up swordplay than with seafood? No need to answer that; it's a rhetorical question about the events of my evening.

"Sword Fighting: From Shakespeare to the Present" at Agecroft was an hour and a half of lecture and demonstration of men with weapons. Unlike now, back in Shakespeare's time men were trained in weaponry, making them an educated audience at his plays. In fact, having a weapon-savvy audience informed how he wrote.

Tonight's talk/demonstration spanned the period between medieval and modern times. Starting with the sword and buckler (an offensive or defensive shield-like device), medieval training manuals depicted the first known fencing student as a woman. Leave it to my people to set a trend for civilized fighting.

Next in weaponry was the long sword, which established distance as driving the dynamics of the duel. With this weapon, fighting was circular rather than static. And the stroke of wrath was exactly what it sounds like: deadly.

Tonight's demonstration continued through the rapier, which had a length limit which was measured at the entry points to the city of London (36" or the rest of it was whacked off before entry). Young toughs who walked the streets with their bucklers clanging against their swords were referred to as swashbucklers. Fun fact learned and stored.

The broadsword apparently transitioned weaponry from the medieval times to the modern. The small sword came next and that's what we saw on Civil War officers in this country.

The lecture and demonstration ended with a fencing round or several, refereed by an electronic device that measured hits. The cord attachments and flashing lights took a bit of the romance out of fencing, I have to say, but it is still fascinating to watch.

Leaving Windsor Farms, I went to Acacia for their mini-wine dinner, a tribute to southern France with Brandon Brown of Potomac Selections. I'd made my reservation at the bar and was ready to return to the drinking world after a short recovery period post-birthday extravaganza.

The meal began with olive-oil poached lobster escabeche style, grapefruit supreme, fennel and basil paired with 2008 Domaine La Bastide Roussane and the pairing was just beautiful. The generous lobster portion was an elegant first course.

Following that was the house-cured floral bacon (yummy beyond words), cress lettuces, pepino melon, American-style Roquefort, poppy seed dressing and it married beautifully to the amber-colored 2009 Chateau Les Valentines Rose de Provence. The bacon, always a welcome addition to any dish, was superb; we could have eaten a plate of that, the wine rep Brandon and I agreed.

I passed on the duck (it had been only three days since my last duck after all) and went for the bouillabaisse braised Mediterranean sea bass, sourdough bread and sea urchin touille with the 2006 Domaine Monpertuis Counoise. Brandon said I could impress all my wine geek friends by simply telling them I'd had multiple glasses of a 100% Counoise, apparently a rare occurrence in the wine world. Geek friends take note and assign points, please.

The crowd around me provided various entertainments including a proposal from a man just arrived from his mom's funeral ("Maybe we should be married") and, from a visitor from Connecticut/Chicago, a different kind of suggestion ("I'd like to kiss you."). What the...? Is the moon full or could it be the heat? The evening finished with a drink with a stranger at Can Can (who knew that at closing time bags of leftover bread were distributed to bar customers? Chocolate croissant, baguette and cinnamon raisin roll were in mine). Nothing like jumping back into the deep water.

The take-away from tonight's escapades? The higher the arm of the swordsman, the more noble the fighter. Also, the cachet of a blending grape as a stand-alone wine can not be understated.

And most unimportant of all, bacon makes everything better.