Gemischter Satz, Mixed Messages

By

Tom Hewson

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Volume 07, The Literary Edition •
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Photo credit: Shutterstock

I reach down to the baggage carousel and slip the strap over my shoulder, the weight of a month’s traveling slowly spreading through my frame, equalizing itself. I pause. Something feels wrong. There is a dampness between my shoulder blades and a smell that doesn’t belong: windfall cherries, woodsmoke. I look down to see a small, red pool forming behind my heels. A man in a yellow jacket reaches for a walkie-talkie.  The source is a now-leaking bottle of Fritz Wieninger’s Pinot Noir Select 2006, naively swaddled in pair-upon-pair of walking socks. It’s a memento of one of those evenings…

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Tom came dangerously close to working in wine on two occasions. First, there were a few steps in the wine trade, pouring and selling, and then later a close call with a chalky, south-facing slope in Kent. As it happened, he found his home at the piano as a performer, composer, and educator in the realms of jazz and contemporary music. Two joyfully unpredictable fields seemed better than one, though, so he now writes about sparkling wine at sixatmospheres.co.uk, also having featured at timatkin.com, Falstaff, The Buyer, and The Drinks Business. He is currently preparing the largest ever single report on English wine for timatkin.com, due for publication in autumn 2021.

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