Lawrence Wine Estates: A day with Carlton McCoy MS, plus 20 wines

Carlton McCoy caught Napa Valley by surprise. After leaving his post as wine director at the luxury hotel The Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado, and moving to Napa Valley in 2018 to join Heitz Cellar, the rumour mill churned. Napa locals wondered in what direction this Master Sommelier would take the iconic label.

For Gaylon Lawrence Jr, the billionaire investor and Heitz Cellar’s owner, hiring McCoy was a no-brainer. The two had become friends at The Little Nell and Lawrence recognised all the traits of a born leader.

A rapid rise

After winning a scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York, McCoy graduated in 2006 and found work at Thomas Keller’s Per Se and Marcus Samuelsson’s Aquavit. By 2011, he made his way to The Little Nell. Just two years later, he would achieve the title of Master Sommelier – all by his 28th birthday.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for wines across the Lawrence Wine Estates portfolio

And when tasked by Lawrence to resuscitate Heitz Cellars, which had existed for years in a rather static state, McCoy rose to that challenge too. He set about refining the wines, fine-tuning the farming to focus on freshness and implemented minimal intervention in the cellar. And that’s not all.

In 2020, the same year Lawrence named McCoy managing partner of Lawrence Wine Estates (LWE), he co-founded The Roots Fund, which has grown into one of the most significant non-profits supporting education efforts for communities of colour in the wine and spirits industries. (McCoy says the credit for the fund’s growth is owed to Ikimi Dubose, the executive director, for her ability to ‘get things done’.) He also serves on the board of trustees of the Culinary Institute of America and in 2022, he starred in the CNN original series Nomad, which (at the time of writing) has just completed filming a second season.

As LWE’s managing partner, McCoy oversees a growing collection of wine estates in Napa and France. The collection includes Heitz Cellar, Haynes, Burgess, Ink Grade, Brendel, Stony Hill Vineyards and Bordeaux second growth Château Lascombes in Margaux. It’s clear that while the organisation has set its roots in Napa Valley, it also aims to grow its portfolio well beyond the valley.

I spent a day with McCoy darting from Heitz Cellar to the new Ink Grade Pavillon tasting room in St Helena, which opened in February 2023. At Ink Grade, I was treated to a preview of its bespoke Senses experience, which offers a 360° video project of a vineyard and winemaking – one of the coolest immersive experiences in Napa. After tasting the Burgess and Ink Grade wines (see below), we bolted south to Haynes Vineyard in Coombsville.

Blending vision and business

Seated in the airy new Salon at Heitz dining room, McCoy’s passion for the science of wine shone. ‘You have to harvest in a way that allows the vine to produce enough sugar and maturity,’ he said, while staring straight through a glass of Heitz Quartz Creek Chardonnay as if locked into a visual memory of the vineyard itself.

He has this habit of swirling a wine, then shaking it – or rattling it – and his mind switches gears while jolting the wine a bit. ‘Higher alcohol levels detract from everything in a wine’, he blurted out as if reminded of some other wine, ‘it numbs your tongue’, he emphasised, ‘as the acid can be out of balance, and it can drown everything else out of the wine.’

The Quartz Creek was balletic and superb; all grace at 12.5% abv. McCoy doesn’t like anything over 14% alcohol but acknowledged that there needs to be enough so that ‘the vine can create complexity in the fruit and the skins and still deliver richness on the palate.’

I asked him about making wine now – a matter of managerial oversight that directly concerns him in his role at LWE. ‘It was all in theory before,’ he says, ‘and I’m learning as I go. Human terroir is the most powerful thing,’ he suddenly expressed. ‘I can go to any region and make any style I want. It’s all about what you want to do and the intention.’

McCoy says he likes hiring winemakers on the cusp of career maturity – those who haven’t necessarily held the reins just yet. Such as Megan Zobeck, who became winemaker of Burgess Cellars in 2020. Zobeck previously worked at a host of impressive places such as Clos Apalta in Chile, at Luli in Piedmont and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and Screaming Eagle in Napa – but never in a leading role. McCoy liked her energy. He knew her socially and was attracted to her fascination with how far she could push wine. ‘I knew she could deliver,’ he said.

Speaking about Brittany Sherwood at Heitz, McCoy was frank. ‘She was behind David Heitz, working in the wings for 10 years, and she was hungry. I saw it.’

Hiring people who have practical knowledge and experience is what McCoy is after. Once he feels he’s in the room with equals, he allows himself to don the Master Sommelier hat.

‘We engage in a lot of conversation and challenge each other,’ he said, laughing off what I imagined mounted not just to hours but probably days of intense and heated debate. It seems to be his strategy for helping each winemaker define the philosophies of their brand.

The Lawrence Wine Estates portfolio

Heitz Cellar

Founded 1961

Located 436 St Helena Hwy, St Helena

Winemaker Joe Heitz (1961-early 1990s), David Heitz (1974-2012); Brittany Sherwood (2012-)

Ink Grade

Founded Vineyard originally planted in 1873. First Ink Grade wines released in 2021

Located 699 St Helena Hwy, St Helena

Winemaker Matt Taylor (2020-)

Stony Hill Vineyard

Founded 1951

Located 3331 St Helena Hwy North, St Helena

Winemaker Fred McCrea (1951-1975); Mike Chelini (1976-2017), Jaimee Motley (2020-2023), Reid Griggs (2023-)

Burgess

Founded 1972

Located 2921 Silverado Trail, Napa 

Winemaker: Bill Sorenson (1972-2012); Kelly Woods (2013-2020); Meghan Zobeck (2020-present day)

Haynes Vineyard

Founded 2019

Located 4047 East Third Avenue, Napa

Winemaker: Nico Cueva (2020-)

A diversity of expressions

The conversation then turned to Martha’s Vineyard, the legendary site at the base of the Mayacamas in western Oakville. Across the street is Opus One, and to the north is the Robert Mondavi To Kalon site, while Harlan Estate is further west above Martha’s Vineyard.

‘There’s something special about the eucalyptus along the eastern perimeter,’ offered Sherwood, who is reserved and punctilious in manner. ‘And how the Martha’s Vineyard clone marries with those notes.’ She observed that the exact clone had been planted in other sites but didn’t ever seem to yield the kind of subtle, minty notes in any other wines.

That got McCoy thinking about the different expressions of Napa Cabernet, which ‘are rampant’, he states. ‘It’s what makes a region exciting. It’s all about farming practices and sites and what you decide to do – your intention. Wine is not a monoculture. It’s having different pollinators and insects that create a whole, healthy ecosystem.’

He thinks the future of farming in Napa hinges on diversification – and it’s clear that he means from the ground up to the people who work in wine. But, tying it back to the land, he explained. ‘When Napa went to a monoculture in the 1970s, we started seeing viruses appearing.’ He believes to rid the valley of viruses and the like, ‘we need to be a living, breathing, working farm’.

Carrying Napa’s heritage forward

We sped off to the new Ink Grade pavilion to taste its portfolio of wines and the Burgess lineup, as well as a preview of Senses the 360° video and surround sound experience that immerses you in the wine-making journey. It’s an expensive experience, as many are in Napa, but a unique one that feels like money well spent.

Bolting south to Haynes Vineyard in Coombsville, Nico Cueva was waiting to run me through a tasting of his unreleased Haynes Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines. Cueva’s soft-spoken manner belies the depth of his talents. We first connected a few years ago after tasting the wines he’d been making at Kosta Browne. Cueva was the first winemaker to officially take the reins directly from Michael Browne.

Cueva gradually ushered in a paradigm shift in the Kosta Browne wines, from opulent and ripe to elegant and finesse-driven – and did so without alienating the fan base. He’s a magical mechanic, and McCoy knew it, so he stole him. As I tasted with Cueva, McCoy was largely silent for the first time all day, giving Cueva room to navigate.

The Haynes wines are lovely: so precise and giving and unlike anything I’d ever had from Coombsville. It occurred to me that this is the whole of McCoy’s aim: to surprise with new projects and to impress with established ones.

But it was Cueva who summed up what I perceive is the overarching mantra of the Lawrence Wine Estates program. Pointing to the lineup of three Haynes Chardonnays, Cueva explained the fanciful names on the bottles: ‘Vigneron is what we grow. Forgeron is what we build out of a barrel selection and Corazon is what we love.’

They are all doing what they love, especially McCoy.

Lawrence Wine Estates: 20 wines from across the portfolio

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