In small, family owned, chef-driven restaurants in Europe, house wines are ubiquitous. Michel Baudouin, the ebullient propriétaire of East Asheville’s RendezVous since 2019 and of downtown’s beloved French bistro Bouchon fromcdvsv 2005 – 2025, says house wines are simply the wine a restaurant’s owner would drink at home.

Since 2012, Domaine Rouge-Bleu, situated in the picturesque Provencal village of Sainte Cécile les Vignes, has been making and bottling the house red, white and rosé for Michel, as well as Le Grand Bouchon, which Michel calls a poor man’s Châteauneuf-du-Pape, because of its quality value. The first labels were designed by Michel and Vonciel Baudouin’s youngest daughter Fuller.

Founded in 2007 by winemaker Jean Marc Espinasse, Domaine was purchased in 2012 by Thomas Bertrand, who is French, and his wife Caroline Jones, from western Australia and the winemaker. The professional relationship deepened to personal friendship, through Thomas’s trips to Asheville and Baudouin family visits to the winery.

Following a wine dinner Thomas hosted at Bouchon in 2019, Michel offered long-time employee Shannon McNally a trip to France – her first. She would spend much of her month there as a volunteer for the harvest. “It’s no vacation,” Michel says with a laugh. “They work in the vineyard from sunrise to sunset.”
The trip included a couple of nights in Paris, and a couple more in Lyon, home of traditional Lyonnaise rustic restaurants known as bouchons; Shannon was guided by Baudouin’s old friend Jean Claude Gotheron.

Abby Curry, whose hospitality timeline began as a child in both of her grandmother’s restaurants in Pittsburgh, started her professional career in a Charlotte wine bar before moving to Asheville for the mountains. Seeking to supplement her income as a server at Bier Garden, in 2022 she showed up at RendezVous in response to an ad for a dishwasher. Instead, she was put on the line. “I had never worked back of house or in a kitchen, but I’m a fast learner and hard worker.”

That ethic soon moved her to a server position, then up the ranks to shift lead server, assistant manager and her current position – at 25 years old — as general manager.

During her tenure at RendezVous, she often heard of Shannon’s experience at Domaine Rouge-Bleu, and last September, she was rewarded with

a similar trip, though not exactly the same experience. Due to a change in laws in France, volunteers are no longer permitted to work the harvest in the vineyard fields. Instead, Curry and a couple from Argentina were more involved in the processing of the harvested grapes and winery tasks, though they were able to pick some grapes from a small field in the rear of the couple’s home.  Following are highlights from Abby’s trip and experience.

AIR: Had you ever been to France before?
Abby: I had never been out of the country, so this was so exciting. I had heard so much about it from Shannon. When I found out I would be in Paris for a few nights, I started making an itinerary there for things to do and found out that my favorite band was going to be on tour there. So, I got to see Kings of Leon perform in Paris, surrounded by French people singing along to every song in English. It was incredible to have that experience.

AIR: What came after Paris?
Abby: I took the train to where Thomas and Caroline live, and Thomas picked up me and the couple from Argentina and filled us in on what we’d be doing. He told us that due to the rain, there were fewer grapes this year. Domaine is biodynamic so it is all dependent on the weather. He explained that because there were less grapes, it was important for the pickers not to miss any.

We were a little disappointed we would not get to do the full harvest, but we trailed the professionals in the field to get any missed grapes. We had little clippers called secateurs and I was out there looking for every lonely little grape, filling my bucket. What I didn’t know until Thomas looked at my bucket was, he meant missed bunches of grapes, not the tart, sad, single grapes I was clipping. No grape left behind!

AIR: What did you learn about the process of harvesting and wine making?
Abby: I learned grape stomping is not a myth! When the grapes are dumped into this big tank to begin processing, there is a hole at the bottom that sucks up the grapes for the next step but the ones at the bottom need to be stomped so there are juices to move the grapes along. Then, there are grapes at the bottom that didn’t make it so those are put in buckets to stomp before the next step. At first, I was like no way, then decided if I was going to have the full experience, I needed to do it.

AIR: Please explain the photo of your head coming out of a porthole and your deep purple hands.
Abby: That was one of my favorite parts. It’s a big tank that was filled with grapes the first day I got there, it’s where the fermentation takes place. Two days before I was to leave, tests showed the fermentation had happened and the grapes needed to be pushed out. So, I climbed into the tank to do that. It was like breathing alcohol, really, really intense. That photo is me getting a breath of air.

AIR: Did you get to bottle any of the wine for RendezVous?
Abby: The grapes harvested from my time there will not be ready for a while. But I did get to bottle our rosé from a previous harvest, and it was really cool because the bottles we were bottling and corking were the first ones that had our new label on them and it’s one of the labels I designed, with a pétanque court. The labels for the red and white wines are of RendezVous; Fuller drew the two characters approaching the building.

AIR: What is your preferred wine?
Abby: Before that trip, I was always a white wine drinker, with a red from time to time. I never liked orange wine. But I got to taste so many vintages and so many of their wines – I can’t possibly tell you how many bottles we consumed there. A lot. But I gained a new appreciation for red, and I really liked their orange wine.

AIR: How do the frites in France stack up with Michel’s award-winning  frites?
Abby: Believe it or not, I did not have a single frite in France. After four years at RendezVous, I am french fried out. I’m known as a picky eater, so my goal was to try new things. And I did.

More about RendezVous.

— Written by Kay West

— AIRfare is sponsored by McGuire, Wood & Bissette

Photos courtesy of RendezVous