![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cb859f588384293674a873a139a27243/7da4c0a1-5f7c-49c7-bbdd-6caa3a3ac1b4_rw_1920.jpg?h=8958b443affeff81ff58b9dd5559744c)
"The Bistro Brawl"
The Curious, Complicated Relationship Between Wine and Wrestling
for Wine Enthusiast
Illustration / Research
Professional wrestling has been a huge interest of mine since I began watching in 2016. Wrestling is, at its core, pure entertainment: Shakespearean storylines about love, friendship, betrayal, good and evil; spectacles of confounding athleticism and wince-inducing scripted violence; dramatic monologuing; intricately crafted costumes; and the constant blurring between reality and fiction, all in the service of storytelling. It is everything I love about art and stories and people who are unrelenting in their passion for their craft. An art form that is tragically dismissed and and passed over by most.
I had causally pitched an idea for this article to writer Caroline Hatchett, little did I know this would turn in to a passion project that would span over a year--from giving writers and editors crash-courses in wrestling, to attending wine tastings, waxing poetic about wrestling as a socio-economic metaphor, and finally creating these illustrations to appear alongside the article in Wine Enthusiast.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cb859f588384293674a873a139a27243/a354a436-702b-41fc-82a0-05dc4826b374_rw_1920.jpg?h=2f9dc3e017ecfa3e9201fa98813b3def)
"Somm-er Slam"
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cb859f588384293674a873a139a27243/8bbc2b4e-4e70-49b2-8d40-8d16526c742a_rw_1920.jpg?h=2fd0ad6a9dae0f1b5a215237402990bc)
"The Sommentators"
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cb859f588384293674a873a139a27243/3fb5adf4-d6bb-43ef-99be-1db789cd4875_rw_1920.jpg?h=c7d2d939960c5a71683a336439b9a9c2)
"The Turnbuckle Chug"
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cb859f588384293674a873a139a27243/15cdc48a-3cee-4e09-a989-27ba599473ef_rw_1920.jpg?h=bb40e9a87f9827fb55ecf7f6f1163bf1)
"The Champagne-ionship"