From Vegas to Volcanos: Christophe Tassan’s Wild Ride to Moon Hollow Winery

If you walked into a Vegas mega-resort wine cellar in the early 2000s, there’s a good chance Christophe Tassan was the one pulling the strings. But rewind a few decades, and you’d find him playing tennis and pouring wine at his family’s 40-seat restaurant in Avignon, France. How does a kid from the sleepy South of France end up running the wine program at Mandalay Bay and later, stewarding the vines located in the volcanic soils of Sonoma’s Moon Mountain?

As it turns out, curiosity and social pressure are a powerful combination. "Guests kept asking me wine questions at the restaurant. And I didn't want to look stupid," Christophe recalls. So he went to wine school, graduated in 1983, and never looked back.

Wine, for Christophe, is more than flavor. It's geography, geology, sociology, and history. "Wine is addictive," he says, "not just to drink but to know." It’s an ongoing education that never ends, because wine is a mirror to the world. To study wine is to study civilization itself.

Christophe’s thirst for knowledge led him to become an MOF (Meilleur Ouvrier de France), a government-bestowed honor reserved for the top wine experts in a country that views its wines as a source of national pride. "You don’t just serve wine, you pass on the legacy. You carry the weight of centuries of tradition" says Christophe. “And with that legacy comes a duty to train the next generation with mentorship, discipline, and preservation of the craft.”

But legacy doesn’t mean stagnation, and Christophe moved to the U.S. on a whim—first to Philadelphia, then to Mandalay Bay, where he went from buying wine by the case to buying it by the pallet. "Vegas gives you everything. When you move that kind volume, you get the cherries off the cake." The level of access was unparalleled and immediately hooked Christophe. What some restaurants in Europe would consider a rare allocation, Mandalay could acquire in bulk. The scale was mind-boggling, and so was the responsibility.

Managing a program across 15 restaurants in a 6,000-room property was a masterclass in both logistics and psychology. "Even if you know everything there is to know about wine, that’s only 5% of the job. The other 95% is psychology. Knowing what your guest needs, how to read them, how to tell the story."

"It’s easy to lose yourself in a place like that," he admits. "The challenge isn’t just knowing wine. It’s operations. It’s people. It’s staying grounded when you have everything you could want your fingertips. At the end of the day France taught me how to love the craft. Vegas taught me how to work. But eventually the allure of Sonoma wine country called.” And in Moon Mountain, Christophe found something singular.

Although they lie adjacent and are often co-mingled in popular culture, "Sonoma is not Napa” Christophe states emphatically. “We sit in Valley of the Moon. Volcanic soil. Extreme elevation. And more personality in one vineyard block than in entire appellations elsewhere." Moon Hollow Winery, where Christophe now works alongside the vineyard and winemaking team, sits in the heart of Moon Mountain, one of the newest AVAs in the country. The area is wild, raw, and unfiltered. Think rocky soils, wide day-night temperature swings, and vines that fight to survive. That struggle creates wines with power and precision. Mountain fruit, Christophe explains, is different. “It has more grip, more structure, more edge.”

Moon Hollow’s flagship wine is its Cabernet Sauvignon, but the lineup also includes Syrah, Grenache, and a strikingly fresh Sauvignon Blanc grown in decomposed volcanic ash. The Moon Hollow White, in particular, is a revelation for those used to drinking their Napa counterparts: lean, mineral-driven, and wildly expressive.

Building out Moon Hollow’s red wine lineup was not without its challenges. "We originally wanted a GSM blend," Christophe explains. "But our Grenache and Syrah didn’t play well together. Syrah is the fighter. Grenache is the hugger. The personalities were too distinct to be forced into harmony. So now we bottle them separately, and the results are spectacular”.

As for winemaking? "We don’t force anything. We let the vineyard speak," he says. "The goal isn’t to make a flashy wine. The goal is to bottle a postcard of this place." That means working with nature, not against it. Sometimes that means changing the blend. Sometimes that means changing your mind.”

Moon Mountain wines aren’t just delicious. They carry the scent of an ancient lava flow that predates homo sapiens, and fingerprints of a team that strives to cultivate the best possible outputs from the land. And Christophe? He’s still learning. Still mentoring. Still obsessed. "A great wine is amazing on one day. An exceptional wine is amazing every day," he says.

His advice to wine lovers? Don’t try to outsmart nature. Be humble enough to listen to the land, to the vines, to the seasons. And when you're visiting wine country, don’t pack your day too tight. Good wines and good moments need space to breathe. He puts it simply: “There’s beauty in restraint. The most unforgettable wines and days are the ones that leave you wanting just a little more.”

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