The Heart Cut: blending whisky and wanderlust into success
From bartending to becoming a global brand ambassador and founding her own bottling business, we learn how whisky and wanderlust shaped Georgie Bell’s success.
The whisky landscape has drastically changed since Georgie Bell first joined the industry 15 years ago. Her career started behind the bar at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society while she was studying geography at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
“There were definitely challenges at the time, whether [because] I was a woman or whether [it was because] I was really young,” she explains on this week’s episode of The Spirits Business Podcast. Georgie’s love for whisky blossomed, and she even completed her dissertation on whisky and regional identity, visiting numerous distilleries as part of her research.
As Bell pursued the next step in her whisky career, she faced setbacks for not having enough experience, despite her thesis work, whisky bar experience, and more – but this only spurred her on and, undoubtedly, led to bigger and better opportunities.
“I ended up doing my fundamentals in distilling with the IBD – the Institute of Brewing and Distilling – and then my diploma in distilling, so the three-year course, which I did in two years,” Bell explained. “Because if someone was going to say: ‘Well, you don’t have enough experience’, I’d be like: ‘Cool, let me show you how much experience I can get and bring to the table’. And I was able to do all of that by the age of 24. So in a roundabout way, you know, yes, the industry, it was challenging at the time, but I embraced that challenge and that actually put me in a better stead for my future career.”
From there, her international career really took off. From being the global brand ambassador for the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Bell was snapped up by Diageo to be the luxury malts ambassador for Mortlach, before moving to Bacardi as global malts ambassador, and progressing to head of advocacy, incubation brands, and then global brand advocacy strategy: whisky.
In 2023, Bell took her next career leap, and co-founded independent bottling company The Heart Cut with her husband, Fabrizio Leoni.
“We’ve released 13 expressions to date, from 12 different distilleries, and the common ground is that every single one of these bottlings is super expressive, and it has lots of personality, and it’s incredibly flavourful,” Bell said. “When you’re buying single casks, you’re not blending whiskies together. There’s nowhere to hide. It is actually really tough finding great single casks, although we’ve been lucky.”
In February this year, The Heart Cut hosted a panel discussion in London, titled ‘For the Love of Whisky’, an extension of its survey into the modern whisky consumer, and how whisky has evolved in recent years.
“We have 411 responses from whisky drinkers,” Bell said, “asking them about their perception of whisky and provenance, how they learn about new whiskies, what whiskies are exciting them at the moment, how much they focus on age statements when choosing a whisky and what are the markers of quality. We’re currently in the process of taking the findings from that, plus the panel discussion, plus additional interviews and putting that into a white paper, which will be available to the whole industry – with not just these findings, but tips from the findings on how you can help progress the conversation as a whisky brand, as a bartender and also as a spokesperson or writer.
“We all have different roles in how we can push the industry forward, and I think that’s especially important now because we are seeing a little bit of doom and gloom within the industry.”
The full podcast episode with Bell is available to listen to on all major streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon.
Alternatively, use the Acast link below.
Previous episodes of The Spirits Business Podcast have featured the co-founders of Brother’s Bond Bourbon, Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey CEO and founder, Fawn Weaver, Dan Szor, founder of The Cotswolds Distillery, and Rob Hollands, CEO of digitalisation company Proof 8.
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