story by Jessie Birschbach / photos by Anna Beeke
The Cinderella story isn’t one you hear often in today’s wine industry: Rarely does a small, family-owned winery like Lloyd Cellars, along with its sister brand Prescription, score a nationwide distribution contract with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (SGWS). As the largest wine distributor in the country, SGWS manages operations in a whopping 44 U.S. states—but it’s still a multigenerational family-owned company. I might even dare to draw a parallel between Louis and Bessie Glazer, starting out in 1909 by delivering soda water via horse-drawn carriage, to Rob and Bonnie Lloyd risking their livelihood to establish Lloyd Cellars.
Lloyd Cellars winemaker Rob Lloyd and executive vice president of sales Geoff Whitman on a recent visit to chef Bob Blumer’s house in Los Angeles, CA, which serves as the eclectic venue for Surreal Showcase, an annual live music event sponsored by the winery.
But opening the Napa-based winery in 2008 wasn’t a logical leap for the couple by any means: Rob—who holds a master’s in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis—had already become a renowned winemaker with a penchant for Chardonnay, helping to run the winemaking programs for a few of the world’s most successful Chardonnay brands. He also had the support and savvy marketing advice of his wife, who helped conceive the branding for Lloyd Cellars and Prescription. Today, they produce Lloyd Cellars’ Pinot Noir from Sta. Rita Hills and Chardonnay from Carneros as well as high-quality, value-driven Prescription Cabernet Sauvignon from the Alexander Valley and Chardonnay from Clarksburg.
And yet even with Rob’s pedigree, he was surprised at the deal he was able to strike with SGWS in fall 2023. “I’m still kind of shocked,” he says. “To have Southern come on board and believe in us is massive. There aren’t many individual winemakers doing this anymore—it really is just mostly corporations making these sorts of deals these days.” He recounts his past distribution efforts: starting out with a broker, subsequently working with smaller distributors, and even arranging a successful partnership between Lloyd Cellars and Total Wine & More. Yet in the aftermath of that deal, he still believed that Prescription wasn’t reaching its potential. Enter the deus ex machina that is SGWS—but once the opportunity to work with the major distributor was presented, Rob realized he would need someone with the rare experience of rolling out a wine brand on a national level. “Just as we were finishing up negotiating the contract and getting ready to sign it,” he recalls, “Bonn and I looked at each other and said, ‘You know what we need? We need a Whitman.’”
“An Amazing Fit”
Geoff Whitman’s entry into the wine industry wasn’t as direct as most. The Boston native and aspiring photographer needed to moonlight in order to subsidize his job in criminalistics, so he landed at Santa Barbara restaurant Wine Cask, owned by Central Coast wine pioneer Doug Margerum. Eventually, Margerum noted Whitman’s enthusiasm and aptitude for wine and suggested he go work for the late Jim Clendenen, considered today to be the godfather of Santa Barbara County wine. After their time together, Clendenen gave Whitman some advice that propelled him to where he is now: “If you want to make money in wine, you’ll need to learn how to sell it.”
Whitman climbed his way up the company ladder at SGWS before doing a brief stint in sales at a start-up spirits producer—but then Robert Mondavi offered Whitman a job running sales in Los Angeles County, “and that was like getting called up to the Red Sox for a kid from Boston,” he says. He partnered with Rob Mondavi on Spellbound, a Folio Fine Wine Partners brand, before selling his portion of the company in 2014, and it was around then that Whitman had a fateful meeting with Rob Lloyd, who was making wine at Michael Mondavi’s Carneros winery.
Fast-forward to October 2023, when the Lloyds heard through a mutual friend that Whitman had just left his current position in distribution for another Napa-based winery. “He’s kind of perfect: a really well-rounded guy who knows how to maneuver around Southern and knows how this process works. I know how to grow brands and I know how to make more wine and keep the quality high, so it was just really an amazing fit,” says Rob.
Geoff Whitman, Rob Lloyd, and Bonnie Lloyd toast to their new partnership while visiting the Los Angeles market.
Seeing Down the Road
For Whitman, now officially Lloyd Cellars’ executive vice president of sales, the feeling of adoration is mutual: “Lloyd [Cellars Chardonnay] is one of these wines that should be on the Mount Rushmore of Chardonnays. The brands [Rob has] worked with have been in the top three or four Chardonnays [according to] Nielsen across the country, [yet] he doesn’t make Chardonnay because it sells—he makes it because he loves it. And that’s unique. It shouldn’t be, but it is,” asserts Whitman. “I don’t use the word ‘kudos’ very often, but kudos to Southern and [executive vice president and general manager, fine wine,] Cindy Leonard for recognizing the potential especially [of] Prescription, which is not just that it’s incredibly scalable and can grow exponentially [but also that] what’s inside the bottle is untouchable [compared] to other brands. Rob’s magic when it comes to creating Chardonnays like that, with his vineyard sourcing and his attention to detail. [Prescription] could easily become the leader in that [$20] price range because, honestly, there’s not a lot of great stuff out there at that price point. [And] the name is great too, harkening back to the Prohibition era. The brand works on a lot of levels, so I think I see the [value in it] that Southern does. That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about working with them: They can see down the road—and now [Lloyd Cellars] has brought me in, so I’m looking forward to turning the volume up on Prescription.”
He isn’t the only one looking forward to that. “I am very pleased to welcome Rob Lloyd and his terrific offerings of Prescription Chardonnay and Cabernet and Lloyd Cellars Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to our national Fine Wine collection,” says Leonard. “Drawing upon [his] rich history and experience, having worked with some of the best producers of Chardonnay in California, combined with his perseverance as a family-owned producer, makes bringing to life these delicious, fun, and affordable wines a true value-add to our customers. It’s great to see Rob and Geoff teamed up together to support our teams and help drive success.”
Based on his experience, Whitman knows that driving this success will be no small task, requiring rather a time-consuming, extensive, carefully executed strategic program. But he’s confident that if the team gets the larger markets right—for instance, they’re currently working with SGWS on introducing Prescription to New York—the smaller markets and states will fall into place. “Pretty much every state has its own process, so it’s in part about trying to get meaningful amounts of wine in the channel so that if one of the chains [decides to carry it], we’re not waiting for product to show up at some point,” he says. “It’s not just about communicating the story, eventually it also becomes logistics. I know how to navigate the process and it’s not overnight. But once everyone is aware of Prescription and its story, then it’s like, OK, let’s see what we can do with this thing.”
As daunting as the process sounds, I’m convinced there’s a wand somewhere in Whitman’s jacket pocket that will somehow make it all unfurl like magic. Now that the prince of distribution has found the right fit with Lloyd Cellars, it seems Prescription Chardonnay will soon have its happily ever after.
