How a Master Sommelier Is Shaking Up the Wine World
“The word disruptor needs rebranding,” says Carlton McCoy, the 40-year-old president and CEO of Lawrence Wine Estates. “I like to look at how things are done and see if there’s a better way, but it's not like I want to blow up the wine industry and make a billion dollars.” McCoy is speaking from his office in Napa Valley, where he has spent the past six years, well, disrupting the wine business. “Actually, a billion dollars would be nice.”
In 2018 he took the helm of the fledgling Lawrence Wine Estates after its namesake owner, Gaylon Lawrence, purchased the venerable Heitz Cellar winery. Since then the company has gone on a buying spree, adding five California vineyards and one in Bordeaux. The pair have hired notable winemakers and dispensed with wine world convention, mostly by giving their individual winery teams latitude to do what they want.
“We pick good people and want them to realize their own potential,” Carlton says. At Château Lascombes, the Margaux-based second growth estate they purchased in 2022, they ruffled feathers by announcing they would bottle wine from a single plot of Merlot vines—unusual in a region where winemakers famously create blends.
The speed with which the company has become a respected player would be the envy of any chief executive, but this is McCoy’s first time running a company. When Lawrence offered him the job, he was wine director at the Aspen resort Little Nell. McCoy has been taking on new challenges since he was a teenager in Washington, DC. In high school he enrolled in the Careers Through Culinary Arts Program, a national mentoring organization, and did so well that he won a full scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America. He went on to jobs in a series of top kitchens, including Aquavit, Craftsteak, and Per Se. Then, on the path to a promising career as a chef, McCoy fell in love with wine. In 2013, at the age of 28, he was one of the youngest individuals ever to pass the notoriously difficult master sommelier exam.
“I was happy in Aspen,” McCoy says of his years working as a sommelier. “But the prospect of trying a new business was too tempting to pass up.” While running Lawrence Wine Estates, he has also launched other projects. In 2020 McCoy co-founded the Roots Fund, a non-profit dedicated to creating career paths in the wine world for members of the BIPOC community. In 2022, he starred in Nomad With Carlton McCoy, a six-part culture and travel series on CNN. In 2024, he filmed Feast, a Napa-focused culinary series produced by Eater and sponsored by Lexus.
“When someone says something can’t be done, it motivates me to say, ‘Well, we don’t know until we try, right?’ ”
This story appears in the February 2025 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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