Brown M&Ms, Death Row Dinners & Biggest Wine Myths
Why is your bag of Doritos 86% air? What does a rock star's backstage snack list actually say about them? And what would you order if you knew it was the last thing you'd ever eat?
George Duran sits down with Brooklyn-based artist and food photographer Henry Hargreaves, a New Zealander who describes himself as a sociologist who happens to work in food. They start with Waste of Space, the series where Henry vacuum-sealed convenience store snacks to measure exactly how much of each bag is nitrogen: Chex Mix came in at 56%, Fritos 64%, Pringles 66%, Doritos 86%. George runs through the snack industry's official excuses for “slack fill” — nitrogen flushing, settling in transit, packaging headspace, cushioning.
Then it's Band Riders, Henry's photo series built from real contracts leaked by venue staff. Axl Rose wanted Wonder Bread and Dom Pérignon. Mariah Carey wanted Cristal and bendy straws. Busta Rhymes wanted fried chicken, Guinness and Rough Rider condoms. Lady Gaga wanted cheese that was neither smelly nor sweaty, served on ice. And Van Halen wanted M&Ms with every brown one removed — which turns out to have been a deliberate quality-control tripwire buried in a 53-page technical rider, not a tantrum.
In the back half, the tone shifts. Henry's No Seconds series recreated the final meals of executed prisoners: Timothy McVeigh's two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream, John Wayne Gacy's bucket of KFC, and Victor Feguer's single olive with the pit left in — a request Henry calls a full stop at the end of a life. What Henry found across all of them was the same thing: comfort food.
Finally, Stephen Finch — founder of Vagabond, the UK's most-awarded self-pour wine bar group, now opening its first US location in Nashville — explains why wine is the most intimidating consumer category there is, why the more expensive bottle isn't necessarily the one you'll like, why screw caps might actually beat cork, and how a wall of argon-sealed dispensers lets you taste a hundred wines before committing to a single glass.
Key Takeaways
- Your chip bag is mostly gas. Hargreaves' Waste of Space measurements: Chex Mix 56% air, Fritos 64%, Pringles 66%, Doritos 86%. Cape Cod was the worst offender he tested at 87%.
- The industry calls it "slack fill." George runs the four standard defenses past Henry: nitrogen prevents oxidation, chips settle in shipping, machines need headspace, air cushions the product. Henry accepts the first and rejects the rest.
- Vacuum sealing doesn't destroy the chips. Counterintuitively, Henry found sealed chips survive better — there's no room for them to bounce around and turn into Doritos dust in transit.
- Contract riders reveal true artist personalities. What began as basic technical requirements evolved into elaborate food, drink, and backstage demands—offering an unfiltered glimpse into an artist's real character.
- The brown M&Ms were an engineering safeguard. Van Halen's 1982 rider ran 53 pages of staging and load-bearing specs. Brown M&Ms in the bowl meant the promoter hadn't read it, which meant the rigging might not be safe either.
- The same rider also asked for one large tube of KY Jelly. Henry's question stands: if the promoter got the M&Ms right and missed that, what does that tell you?
- Henry thinks musicians get unfairly vilified for riders. Asking for something specific isn't the same as throwing a fit when you don't get it.
- An outsider's perspective on American executions. As a New Zealander, Henry found state-sanctioned execution surreal enough to investigate — which is how No Seconds started, after he read about a Texas prisoner being denied his final request.
- Last meals are almost always comfort food. Not gluttony, not spectacle. People reach backwards, toward childhood. Henry's own pick: granola with fruit and yogurt.
- A single olive said more than a banquet. Victor Feguer, executed in Iowa in 1963, asked for one olive with the pit still in it, hoping an olive tree would grow from his grave as a sign of peace. The pit was found in his suit pocket afterward. But since it was a brined pit, it was not destined to grow.
- Wine is arguably the most daunting consumer category that exists. Grapes, regions, producers, styles, vintages — Stephen Finch argues most of us default to either familiarity or price because we have no other tools.
- Quality and preference are different questions. More expensive generally does mean higher quality. It does not mean you'll like it. Finch's advice: like what you like, then learn why, and the confidence follows.
- At the bottom end, you're buying marketing. Industrial wine is a brand plus a process engineered to produce an identical liquid every year.
- Europe tastes free and sells cheap; America charges for the tasting. George's three years in France versus the US model, where the vineyard costs more than the shop down the road. Finch's read: it's a genuinely great experience, so American producers priced it like one.
- Screw caps aren't a downgrade. Cork allows micro-oxygenation; a screw cap is closer to hermetic. Depending on the wine, that can be an advantage.
- Bag-in-box is technically excellent packaging and Finch has one at home.
- European appellation rules made sense historically and can now be a brake. Wine was the primary export of many regions, so regulating it protected the name. However, California's lack of rules produces a mosaic worth learning from.
- Vagabond puts 100 wines on a self-pour wall, grouped by style rather than region or grape, available by the sample, the glass or the bottle. Argon keeps the open bottles fresh on the machine.
People, Companies & Works Mentioned
- Henry Hargreaves — New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based artist and food photographer — https://henryhargreaves.com
- Waste of Space — chip bag air-to-snack ratios — https://youtu.be/izaJ2INQNoE
- Band Riders — real musician contract riders, shot as Flemish-style still lifes (a collaboration with stylist Caitlin Levin and typographer Lorenzo Fanton) — https://henryhargreaves.com/Band-Riders
- No Seconds — recreations of death row final meals — https://henryhargreaves.com/No-Seconds
- Also referenced in passing: his sugar-in-soft-drinks work and the series extracting physical iron from breakfast cereal
- Stephen Finch — Founder of Vagabond Wines — https://www.vagabondwines.co.uk/
- Vagabond Wines Nashville — Self-pour wine bar and restaurant, founded London 2010; US debut in Nashville's Gulch at 1000 Division Street, opening late 2026 — https://www.instagram.com/vagabond.nash/
Also referenced
- Snack brands cited — Doritos, Fritos, Pringles, Chex Mix, Cape Cod
- Musicians cited from Band Riders — Van Halen, Axl Rose, Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Billy Idol
- Brands cited from riders — Dom Pérignon, Cristal, Wonder Bread, Guinness, Rough Rider, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, M&Ms
- Miller High Life — Henry's pick for both his hypothetical rider and his last meal
- Murray's Cheese — West Village cheesemonger
- KFC The Lord of the Rings — Ronnie Lee Gardner's requested viewing; also a point of national pride for Henry
- Prisoners referenced in No Seconds — Timothy McVeigh, Ronnie Lee Gardner, John Wayne Gacy, Victor Feguer, Ricky Ray Rector
Transcript
Van Halen requested M&Ms. With all the brown ones removed.
Henry Hargreaves:Well, I also often wonder if they got the M&Ms. Right, but they forgot the KY jelly that they also ordered. Like, what that would mean.
George Duran:Welcome to the Always Hangry podcast, where we break down the way we eat. The good, the bad, and the completely ridiculous. I'm your host, George Duran. On today's show, we'll settle one of the snack world's biggest debates.
Why are potato chip bags so full of, well, nothing. A whole. Also, we'll dive into the bizarre backstage food demands of some of the world's biggest rock stars.
And later on, do you know what you'd like for your last supper?
Well, we'll dig deeper into the final meals chosen by death row inmates, and then we're talking all things wine, including a wine bar where you can taste your way through the wine list before deciding what deserves a full glass. Joining me now is the artist and photographer responsible for making food both hilarious and slightly uncomfortable, and Henry Hargreaves.
Henry Hargreaves:G'day, George. Thanks for having me.
George Duran:For someone who doesn't know you and they find out you work with food, tell us exactly what you do with food and in your photography.
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, I sort of think of myself as almost like a sociologist with food. You know, I'm trying to tell stories, and I use the camera as a way to visually, like, share it.
So it's like, you know, hey, let's understand more about the world, and let's try and empathize with people who we might not necessarily be able to do in normal context, but, hey, through the food, it's like a common denominator.
George Duran:Sometimes I look at your works of art, your series, and I feel like you're more of a sociopath, not necessarily a sociologist.
Henry Hargreaves:First of all, when I started to be a photographer, it was readily available and a really cheap medium to get my hands on. I wanted to be a fashion photographer at the start, and it was such a headache to do anything.
And suddenly I would go to the supermarket and be like, hey, here is like, you know, all these things that I can play with. And then I was like, you know what? It's just me problem solving with something. And I love this process. So I was like, food it is.
George Duran:You're perfect for the show because this is exactly what we do. We look at people's behavior with food, especially in this country.
And you being from New Zealand, you probably find some things that are quite different that Americans do than people from New Zealand do.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, I mean, look, I Think that's also part of. Part of it is, you know, I. I still kind of like playing the outside and looking in. And it's a little bit like that in the food space as well.
Like, I don't know if I'm justifying my laziness, but I've never actually become a good cook, you know, and I quite like, you know, this kind of like, oh, it's a magic world that I still also am a bit of an outsider in.
George Duran:Amazing. So some of your series are off the wall, like, wild. One of the ones that really stood out for me was called Waste of Space.
And you're pretty much taking these bags of chips and you're measuring how much space there's inside of these, because that's a big. You buy this bag of chips, you open it up, and you're just, like, completely disappointed. Tell us how that came about.
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, look, I think I had the same reaction as you where I'd open something in just, like, the letdown. And, you know, I was like, how. What is the difference here? You know?
And we talk about carbon footprints and things, and I'm like, how many trucks don't need to be on the road? And so I was like, let's vacuum seal them, measure the displacement, and just see, you know.
And I think, you know, like, most of them were, you know, 84, 85% air.
George Duran:Yeah, I have some of the stats here. You did Chex Mix, and you said about 56% of chex mix was air.
Henry Hargreaves:Right?
George Duran:That's crazy. So are you taking these, like, Chex Mix, and you're crushing it, and then you're weighing it and then you're seeing what the volume is?
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, it was pretty basic physics. I just literally had a measuring bowl, dunk the bag, so it was totally under, see the displacement.
And then took the chips out, vacuum sealed them, and did exactly the same thing. And kind of the irony is when things are vacuum sealed, they don't break. You know, they're tight. They're not moving around.
And you get that bag and, you know it's been jiggled around enough, you're opening that up. I mean, half of it's like, you know, Dorito dust by the time, you know, you get into it.
George Duran:Totally. And that air. That air that they put inside of it is called slack fill in the industry. By the way, there's a term for that.
You did Fritos, and you said Fritos had 64% emptiness. And. And Doritos had 86%. Is that real?
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah.
I mean, like, all these are legit. Yeah.
I mean, take my scientific approach with a slight grain of salt, but I'm pretty confident within a couple of points of standard deviation, you'll find these are totally accurate.
George Duran:Pringles had 65% empty space.
Although that's weird, because when you open a Pringles can, it's relatively full, but what you're doing is crushing it and seeing how much air there is into it. Here's the reason companies say there's more air than food in a bag of chips. Are you ready to hear their excuses?
Henry Hargreaves:Bring it on.
George Duran:All right. It allows them to flush packages with nitrogen to prevent oxidation.
Henry Hargreaves:It could be. I'm not a. Not an expert in oxidization, but, like, I'll take it.
George Duran:Okay. They say that chips settle during shipping, so it's not their fault it's full. It's just when you ship it, it's settling.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, yeah. That one's a bit of a harder, harder buy for me.
George Duran:Packaging machines need more headspace so they could fill it up properly.
Henry Hargreaves:Okay, okay. Still. Still dubious.
George Duran:It also creates a cushion to protect the food from shipping and handling.
Henry Hargreaves:I. I mean, look, I think we come back to, like. I think the vacuum sealing things would be a more efficient way. But anyway, keep going.
George Duran:I mean, you can't vacuum seal chips?
Henry Hargreaves:Hold on.
Henry Hargreaves:You can't? Why couldn't you vacuum seal?
George Duran:Well, the vacuum would crush the chips, and now you really have that.
Henry Hargreaves:Well, like, when I. So when I vacuum sealed them, it actually wasn't. I mean, we're not talking completely crushing. The vacuum seal is actually quite gentle.
George Duran:Oh, interesting.
Henry Hargreaves:And when you bring them all pretty close and there isn't all this space, you know, I kind of gave it, like, a little shake. They settled kind of organically.
I'm not saying there was absolutely no breakage, but, I mean, I don't think there's anything different than having that bag jiggled half a dozen times, you know, before picking it up.
George Duran:So tell us more visually what people are going to see when they go onto your website for this series.
Henry Hargreaves:I also did soft drinks with the amount of sugar in there. To actually visualize the sugar. I did one with physical iron that's put into cereal where I was pulling it out.
And it's kind of all these things that you hear about, but I was like, I just want to give it the most simple visual language. And I'm also a great believer in not preaching too hard and telling people exactly what they should think. I'm like, look, here's something.
Take a look at this. Hopefully you're seeing something through a new lens and you can make up your own assumptions and conclusions about this.
George Duran:One of the things that stood out for me from your series was called Band Riders. Can you explain to us what a band rider is?
Henry Hargreaves:So a band rider is basically a musician's request when they go and play a venue. And traditionally the rider was about the equipment. You know, hey, we want these amps, we want these microphone stands, we want this stuff.
And over time, it's got slightly more curated where they're, you know, actually I also want these food requests, I want these drinks, I want this.
You know, some musicians, it's like it's down to furniture and like they want, you know, when you hear about the superstars who want the room painted a certain color and all that. Anyway, that comes in this rider form.
So I found online, I did a deep dive and found a whole bunch of writers, like real writers that people had shared who worked at music venues. And I loved what it said about these musicians.
George Duran:So here are some band riders for famous celebrities. Axl Rose, he wanted a sliced white bread and Dom Perignon.
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, to me it's like he's got the trappings of a rock star, but he's still a kid from a trailer park in Indiana.
George Duran:Mariah Carey wanted Cristal and Bendy Straws.
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, I think that speaks for itself.
George Duran:That totally makes sense. A lot of these, it's funny, it kind of encompasses who they are as a person too. A lot of their personalities.
Busta Rhymes wanted fried chicken, Guinness and condoms.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, I think they were Rough Rider condoms too. Don't forget that detail.
George Duran:But imagine walking into that green room and it smells like fried chicken. I don't know. Or condoms. Either way. I mean, obviously.
Henry Hargreaves:Well, I just, I love the idea of like, you know, Rough Rider condoms before the show. Like, you know, you're just. There's more to the story than that. And again, I'm just like, here's the request. You read into this. What you want.
Like, is there like some sort of a session going on here?
George Duran:Lady Gaga wanted small cubes or slices of cheese that must be non smelly and non sweaty, served over ice.
Henry Hargreaves:And there's also that idea of like, just cause you can ask for a request. You know, how specific people get. And I don't.
To me, that sounds like supermarket cheese, you know, but maybe, you know, she's asking the same request when she goes to the Bougiest cheese, you know, Murray's cheese in the West Village or something.
George Duran:What cheese doesn't smell in sweat, though? That's the question.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
George Duran:Rihanna. Rihanna asked for hard boiled eggs, turkey bacon, turkey sausage, available at any time, meaning she always needed that to be available.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah.
George Duran:Billy Idol, a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. What if it's butter, by the way? He will throw a fit. I'm sure of that.
Henry Hargreaves:Right.
George Duran:And then, Halen, this is a famous one. I know about this one. Van Halen requested M&Ms. With all the brown ones removed.
And this is interesting because a lot of people say that it wasn't necessarily because he didn't like the brown M&Ms. Right. What was that about?
Henry Hargreaves:That one was supposedly, if they got the M&Ms. Right, they didn't have to worry about the music equipment. It was like. Yeah, it was the metaphor between.
George Duran:Yeah. And. Because they had a very specific and complicated setup for their music equipment.
And so that gave them a gauge to figure out if their brown M&Ms. Were not there. That means they paid attention to all the details.
Henry Hargreaves:Well, I also often wonder if they got the M&Ms. Right, but they forgot the KY jelly that they also ordered. Like, what that would mean.
George Duran:That's crazy. I didn't know they requested that, too. Do you think these artists are being kind of divas, or is it really about quality control?
Henry Hargreaves:I often think that they get a little bit, like, vilified here. I think there's a bit of. If you can ask a question, they might give an answer. Doesn't mean that they're gonna, like, absolutely throw a tantrum.
But again, this is what we like to, you know, this is where it sits in that area for interpretation.
George Duran:What would you ask for your band rider?
Henry Hargreaves:I'd want some Miller High Life. I feel like that is what I would want to be drinking before a show to get me up, actually.
George Duran:I would ask for a perfectly ripened avocado. If there's any black marks, gray marks, brown marks in the avocado, I'm not going to perform.
Henry Hargreaves:Done. Yeah. And they better have caressed that.
George Duran:All right, we're going to take a quick break with Henry Hargreaves, and when we come back, we'll go from backstage food demands to the most consequential food request of all, a death row inmate's final meal. And later on, we're popping the cork on some of the biggest wine myths.
What's true, what's nonsense, and what you've probably been getting wrong for years. We'll be right back. Okay. We're back on Always Hangry, and we're with artist and photographer Henry Hargreaves.
You can find a lot about him and his works at henryhargreaves.com you did an entire series about the final meals of convicted criminals. You recreated their meals. What is it that fascinated you about this whole idea?
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, this is a little bit of the outsider looking in. Like in New Zealand, culturally, you know, we're pretty similar to America.
But this idea that the state can execute its own people, you know, is something that I think for a lot of Western nations is just, like, completely surreal and different. I was reading about a guy in Texas who was being denied his final meal request, and I was like, what? Let's do a deep dive here.
Let's find out what people are actually requesting and understand a bit more. And, I mean, it's well documented. Like, there are Wikipedia pages about it.
And when someone's executed on the state website, it goes into the most sobering detail of, like, 9:47, you know, last rites, read everything. And then there's the food. And as I read through the food requests, I felt I started to get quite moved.
You know, it was like, they're often presented as kind of statistics and outlaws and the worst of the worst. And so I was like, what would it look like to bring some of these requests and meals to life and share them?
And with a lot of my work, it just starts as an idea like, let's jump in, let's do this. And I did it. And it immediately caught fire, the series and started getting shared, spread, I guess viral is the term that you would use for it.
And it really resonated with people. And it's like, hey, food and death, you know, is something we all have a relationship with.
George Duran:And the series is called no Seconds. It's a genius title for it. Here are some of the last requests for meals from inmates. Timothy McVeigh.
Henry Hargreaves:Two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
George Duran:Wild. That's absolutely wild.
Ronnie Lee Gardner, he requested lobster tail steak, apple pie, vanilla ice cream while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Can you even do that?
Henry Hargreaves:The request was put in. It was official. And as a New Zealander, Lord of the Rings also has a special place in my heart, as it was all made there.
So that's why I was like, this one is one of them.
George Duran:Except I found out that the extended edition of Lord of the rings is 12 hours and 6 minutes long. He essentially bought himself 12 hours of life.
Henry Hargreaves:Well, also, the other thing Is each state has a different set of rules around it.
George Duran:Crazy. John Wayne Gacy — 12 fried shrimp, bucket of original KFC french fries, and a pound of strawberries. And interestingly enough, prior to the conviction, he had been managing three KFCs. So he had a history of KFC.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, yeah.
George Duran:All right.
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, I also love that fact. You talk to people who've worked in fast food restaurants and they're like, I never want to touch that stuff again in my life.
And here he is wanting it. For his last meal.
George Duran:Victor Feguer requested. A single olive with the pit still inside. What is that about?
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, to me, the symbolism there, I don't know. Full stop at the end of the life, you know, the olive tree, you know, these things.
Like, again, he never said officially what it meant, but I just, I love the interpretation that you can put into these things.
George Duran:I dug deeper into this and it turns out that he wanted, after he was buried, for that olive pit to grow.
Henry Hargreaves:To actually grow.
George Duran:And incredibly enough, they ended up finding the pit in his pocket.
Henry Hargreaves:Really?
George Duran:Yeah. After he was put to death. You cannot grow an olive pit after it's been brined. It won't grow into a tree.
It has to be a fresh olive from the tree for it to grow. So it would have been useless.
Henry Hargreaves:Wow.
George Duran:Completely useless. Ricky Ray Rector, he requested steak, fried chicken, cherry kool aid, and a pecan pie.
Henry Hargreaves:Well, he was actually mentally disabled.
George Duran:Yes. All this makes sense. Absolutely. What would your final meal be?
Henry Hargreaves:I mean, I think the thread with all of these as well is comfort food. And that's what people are looking for at the end. And I think about those. If I was to think about the comfort food I would want Take me back.
Probably would be a bowl of granola with fruit and yogurt.
George Duran:Come on, man.
Henry Hargreaves:And if I was in a state that allowed alcohol, I'll put Miller High Life next to it.
George Duran:My goodness, we're gonna get some sponsors on this show. Henry Hargreaves, thanks so much for being here.
Henry Hargreaves:Yeah, absolutely, George.
George Duran:When we come back, we're separating wine fact from wine fiction and discovering Vagabond, a wine bar where you can taste first and find your perfect pour. Welcome back to Always Hangry. Our guest today is Stephen Finch.
He has spent more than 16 years in the wine world, traveling through some of its most famous regions and tasting thousands of wines along the way. He's also the founder of Vagabond, the award winning self-pour wine he launched in London and is now bringing to the United States.
Stephen, welcome to the show.
Stephen Finch:Oh, thanks, George. Appreciate, appreciate you having me here.
George Duran:Stephen, why is wine so complicated? I mean, right off the bat, you know, when I want go into a wine shop, I'm just confused.
Stephen Finch:It's not just you, so don't feel bad about that. It's, it's, it's all of us, myself included.
It's just I struggle to think of any sort of consumer category that quite honestly is as complicated and therefore daunting as wine. So you just have this crazy layering of massive variables of grapes and regions and producers and styles, all this stuff.
And you walk into a wine shop, there are hundreds if not thousands of options. Same thing with a wine list. And for most of us, we don't have anywhere near the level of knowledge to meaningfully navigate that.
All those differences and as a result we're often left to outsourcing our decision making to familiarity. I've had this kind of thing before, or price. Like I'm gonna, if it's more expensive, surely it's better.
George Duran:Except it's also expensive. And how do I trust a sommelier who's trying to sell me the most expensive wine? I presume sell me a wine that is actually good and worth the price.
Stephen Finch:I would probably first draw a distinction between quality and, and am I going to like it? You could make an argument. And I think it's probably true that generally speaking, the more expensive something is, the better the quality.
But that does not mean I'm going to like it because it's more expensive. It's okay to like what you like. Don't feel like you need to hew to this, this idea that, that, that people are dangling around you.
Like I need to like these things. No, like what you like. Just hopefully you can learn why you like it so you can become more confident in that.
George Duran:Can we talk about marketing in wine? How much of wine is marketing at the end of the day and what the label looks like.
Stephen Finch:Oh my Lord, that's a tricky one. There are industries at the lower end of wine, the sort of, you know, I'd say the industrial made stuff that is almost entirely marketing budget.
They've created a brand, they've optimized a, you know, manufacturing process to generate a resulting liquid that is identical from year to year. It's not my cup of tea, so to speak.
George Duran:Yeah. You know, I lived in France for three years and I remember going to vineyards there. You go there that you taste for free.
Once, if you like a wine, they sell to you for essentially half the price that you can find it anywhere else because you're at the vineyard. But here in the United States, it's the opposite. They charge you more at the vineyard than what they charge at the wine shop down the street.
And it's. You have to pay to taste you. This luxury experience. Why are we backwards with wine like this?
Stephen Finch:Good question. And I don't recall it always being like that. It's such a lovely, desirable thing to do.
And I think, you know, quite fairly, the, you know, the winemakers, the producers, they've realized, like, this is a thing of value. It's kind of like an adult Disney World. Probably should charge accordingly. And, you know, I don't like that, but I get it. So how is that possible?
Yes. Cultural different. You know, American, we. We will charge for it. We will create a product out of a thing and sell it for what the market will bear.
France, it's. They do have a history of how things are done, and that has a momentum. I like that way that it exists in Europe.
And let's not do anything to make that change, please.
George Duran:Yeah, the screw caps is. That's also always associated with cheap wine. But that's not true anymore, right?
Stephen Finch:Absolutely not. I'll be the first to admit when. When I first started coming across screw caps, I was like, jesus, this is. This is awful.
Like, there's nothing sacred, but, you know, just haven't been around it for a long time. Like, it's legit. It's not only like, okay, but like, in many ways, it could be better than cork.
So you think with a cork, to a certain extent, there's like a micro. Micro level of breathing interfacing with the atmosphere going on, which presumably allows it to age more naturally nicer.
Whereas a screw cap is a bit more of a hermetically sealed sort of environment.
George Duran:And what about bag and box wine? What's your opinion on those?
Stephen Finch:We have one in the house.
George Duran:Oh, you do? Okay, good.
Stephen Finch:Yeah.
Well, alternative packaging people keep trying, I rooted on, but I definitely think bag and box is a great thing because technically it is a great packaging option, and it works really well. Don't worry about oxidation.
George Duran:There are a lot of regions in Europe that the government kind of controls the quality of the wine and how you can grow and harvest and when you can harvest the grapes for the wine. Why don't we have those rules in California?
Stephen Finch:Yeah. I mean, obviously with Europe, they've had to do it over.
Over the millennia, really, because this was, like, in many places, this was the primary economic export of the region. So you Know, if they were selling something from, you know, say, Tuscany for the. Or Chianti, that's a great one. Like they wanted it to be this thing.
They want people to know that if they buy wines from Chianti, it's going to be this kind of thing, but also this level of quality. And so they had every self interest to regulate that. And it made a lot of sense.
Nowadays, you know, it's, it's arguably less relevant and in many cases it's actually a hindrance. It's holding innovation and creativity and artistry back. California again marches to their own beat.
And that's okay because, you know, I think it's quite in keeping with the American psyche that we're going to do what we think works. And we might make mistakes along the way. And certainly they have like, they've planted the wrong grapes, the wrong areas.
And for a long time it was all about Merlot. And then, you know, a certain movie came out and people started ripping out Merlot.
But that's, that's sort of the beauty and the brilliance of the American way is there are no restrictions really. They can just do whatever. And I kind of like that.
I want to have a mosaic where people are doing things differently because then it allows me to identify what works better.
George Duran:For me personally, one of the biggest problems I have in a restaurant is ordering a bottle and committing to that bottle of wine. But you've figured out a way around it with your self-pour concept. Can you tell us more about Vagabond Wines?
Stephen Finch:Yeah, absolutely. With vagabond, we've got 100 wines. All Vagabonds have 100 wines that you can taste by the sample or the glass by style rather than region or grape.
And that just being able to expand that boundary of your knowledge and your confidence in wine is such a rewarding thing for everyone.
George Duran:So the concept is that you're taking your glass and you're going up to this counter that has a self-pour feature, almost like a soda bar, for example, and you get to choose and how do you monitor how much is being poured and how much you pay and how much you drink?
Stephen Finch:Yeah, so we have these self-pour machines. So we each one has 10 bottles. So you can go in and get a sample. So it's enough for like two mouthfuls or you can get a proper glass.
You can even get a bottle if you want. But for the self-pour machines, it's all about pouring some wine out, having a taste.
George Duran:So is it pushing an inert gas inside of the bottle? To always keep it fresh and this way you can use it for weeks on end.
Stephen Finch:Yeah. These are definitely. They work with an inert gas and in this case it is argon.
So once you get some argon in, in the wine bottle, it creates a safe layer. So it is preserving the wine once you put it on. On the machine.
George Duran:Yeah. Can you buy the bottles of wine afterwards to take home?
Stephen Finch:That depends on the local regulations. So in the, in the uk, that's fine that we UK does not have a history of puritan based liquor laws.
George Duran:Are you going to bring Vagabond wines to the United States?
Stephen Finch:Yeah, that's what we're doing. So yeah. I came back to Nashville after many years in London and this is definitely the place where I want to recreate Vagabond for America.
Nashville being the first one. And I think the timing is absolutely right for this right now.
George Duran:For me to be able to go into a restaurant and be able to taste, just taste different wines and then choose the glass that I want, it's a genius idea. I don't know why we haven't done this in the past. Stephen Finch from Vagabond Wines, thanks so much for being on Always Hangry.
Stephen Finch:My pleasure. Thank you, George.
George Duran:And you can check out Vagabond Wines at VagabondWines.com and you'll find more about them there. And for all the folks tuning in, if you liked what you heard, follow the Always Hangry podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
And head over to always hangrypodcast.com for new episodes, bonus content and everything else we've got cooking. I'm George Duran. Until next time, stay hungry.
