Jamie Ritchie

Sotheby's World-wide Head of Wine

Jamie Ritchie became Head of Sotheby’s global wine business in May 2016. He joined Sotheby’s in London in 1990 and was responsible for launching Sotheby’s wine auctions in New York in 1994 and in Hong Kong in 2009. The worldwide auction business has sales of $65 to $90 million per year. More recently, Mr. Ritchie was responsible for launching Sotheby’s Wine, a retail store and online wine business, becoming the only major global auctioneer offering fine wines at retail. Sotheby’s Wine has two retail businesses, one at their flagship headquarters in New York and a second location in their gallery in Hong Kong.

Mr. Ritchie is one of the world’s leading wine auctioneers and was one of the auctioneers at each of the 16 consecutive Hong Kong “white glove” auctions, selling 10,202 consecutive lots (without an unsold lot).

Mr. Ritchie has been a leading Sotheby’s auctioneer for many extraordinary and record breaking auctions such as The Millennium Wine Cellar (1999, US$14 million), Lafite Ex Cellars (2010, US$8 million), The Ultimate Cellar (2011, US$12 million), The Classic Cellar from a Great American Collector, I through XI (2009 through 2013 US$55.2 million), Château Mouton Rothschild (2014, US$ x million) and Château Margaux (2014, US$x million).

Carlton McCoy MS

President & CEO, Heitz Cellar, Burgess Cellars & Stony Hill Vineyard

Carlton McCoy Jr. earned the title of Master Sommelier in 2013 at just 28 years old, he was one of the youngest people and the second African American to earn this prestigious title. Carlton worked in revered institutions such as Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Eric Ziebold’s Cityzen, Marcus Samuelsson’s Aquavit and most recently as Wine Director at The Little Nell in Aspen before being named President and CEO of Heitz Cellar in December 2018. In 2020 Carlton was named Managing Partner of Lawrence Wine Estates with him overseeing the purchase of Burgess Cellars, Stony Hill Vineyards, as well as the Haynes Vineyard and the historical Wildwood Vineyard in Rutherford. In this new role, Carlton supports each estate in their aspirations to craft elegant, nuanced and terroir driven wines sourced from naturally farmed estate vineyards. Carlton is also a co-founder of The Roots Fund, a non-profit that focuses on creating educational and employment opportunities for our BIPOC community.

Heidi Barrett

Owner and Winemaker, La Sirena

Heidi Peterson Barrett is one of the world’s most renowned and respected winemakers. Since the 1980s, she has created some of the Napa Valley’s most famous wines, including Screaming Eagle, Dalla Valle, Grace Family, Paradigm, and many others. She started her own brand, La Sirena, in 1994, and began her collaboration brand, Barrett & Barrett, with her husband, Bo Barrett of Chateau Montelena, in 2008.

Heidi got her start at a young age. Her father, Dick Peterson, is a scientist-winemaker, and her late mother, Diane, was an artist. Heidi gravitated toward both fields, and found that the world of wine was an ideal place for her to explore and combine these passions. Growing up, she worked in numerous vineyards and wineries alongside her dad, and decided to pursue it as a career, attending UC Davis for Fermentation Science and going on to several internships and positions in the industry.

Her career took off in the late 80s when she began working for Dalla Valle as an “independent winemaker”. She began to develop a tiny project called Screaming Eagle shortly afterwards, and from there, things escalated quickly. With 5 perfect 100-point scores for her wines in the span of just a few years, Heidi skyrocketed to international fame, setting a world record for the highest price ever paid for a single bottle of wine ($500,000 for a 6L of 1992 Screaming Eagle at the Napa Valley Wine Auction in 2000).

Today, Heidi maintains a stable of ultra-premium client wineries, including Paradigm, Lamborn, Amuse Bouche, Au Sommet, Fantesca, and Kenzo Estate, as well as her own brands La Sirena and Barrett & Barrett. She and Bo live among their vineyards in Calistoga. In her free time, she enjoys scuba diving, skiing, flying her helicopter, making art, and gardening.

Bernard de Laage

General Manager, SLOAN ESTATE

Bernard de Laâge de Meux was born in the Charente area, in a family that has been involved in the wine and spirit business since the middle of the 19th century. He studied at the University of Bordeaux.
After earning a post-graduate degree in business administration, a degree from the Institut des Hautes Finances in Paris and later the DUAD from the Institute of Oenology in Bordeaux, Bernard has spent all of his career in the world of the fine wines and spirits. After gaining a first experience in the cooperative wineries in Bordeaux, he then managed a Cognac house in the Cognac area. He came back to Bordeaux in 1999 to organize and handle the promotion of Chateau Palmer in Margaux. He traveled throughout the world for Palmer, meeting with distributors, experts and enthusiasts in Asia, Oceania, Europe and the Americas, and organizing public relation events as Château Palmer's wine ambassador. In 2014, he joined the Goldin Group in Hong Kong and its owner Mr. Pan as the CEO of Goldin Wines. Since 2017, he leads the wineries of this group, as President of the Chateau Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol and managing director of Sloan Estate in Rutherford, Napa Valley.

Philippe Melka

Owner and Winemaker, Melka Estates

Like the celebrated wines on which he’s built his reputation, Philippe Melka’s career has been influenced by soil.

A native of Bordeaux, Melka grew up intrigued by the intricacies of the land around him. When it came time for college, he acted on his childhood interests, earning a degree in Geology at the University of Bordeaux. A class in winemaking in his final year was a turning point, propelling him to earn a Master’s degree in Agronomy and Enology.

Melka has the rare combination of talent and fortune to be a winemaker who started at the top: his first job out of school was at Château Haut Brion. From there, he took a position with the reputable Moueix Company and was sent to Dominus Estate in Yountville to study soils in 1991. Napa Valley soil proved to be a revelation for Melka. He set out traveling, dividing time between soil study and winemaking at world renowned wineries Badio O Coltibuono in Chianti and Chittering Estate in Australia. He returned to France in 1993 to deepen his expertise at Chateau Petrus.

He has been fortunate to have been trained and influenced by some of the most notable personalities in the wine business such as Jean Delmas and Jean Philippe Masclef from Haut-Brion, Christian Moueix and Jean Claude Berrouet from Petrus, Paul Draper from Ridge, Daniel Baron from Silver Oak and the globetrotting wine consultant Michel Rolland with whom he continues to work with on consulting projects..

In 1994, he returned to Napa full time, and for the past 20 years, Melka has served as winemaking consultant for some of Napa’s most highly regarded properties under his company Atelier Melka founded in 1995. As co-proprietor of Melka Estates, Philippe and Cherie produce four distinct labels that reflect their philosophy of soil driven wines: Metisse from Napa Valley, Mekerra from Sonoma Valley, Majestique from around the world and CJ, also from Napa Valley.

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