The Heart Cut - Georgie Bell

0:03Georgie Bell:Hello there and welcome to episode 135 of People Doing Things. Today we're swapping the scroll for a moment of pause with Georgie Bell, co-founder of The Heart Cup, an independent bottler that's democratising the whisky industry for a new world. Historically, independent bottling was reserved for the 0.1 % of traditional whiskey drinkers. It was a bit dusty, heavily reliant on third-party cast brokers, and the true story of the distillery was often lost along the way. Georgie and her husband Fabrizio saw an opportunity to zag against tradition and do things a little differently. Now, Georgie is a whiskey prodigy.

0:39Georgie Bell:Starting her career as a bartender in Edinburgh, she went on to become the global whiskey ambassador at the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society by the age of 24. She holds a degree in distilling with the highest mark in the world that year and is a keeper of the quake and a liveryman of the worshipful company of distillers. After 13 years climbing the ranks of corporate giants like the Agio and Bacardi, she traded corporate travel for the barrel. launched in september 2023 the exact same week she gave birth to twins the heart cart goes directly to the world's most exciting distilleries buying 100 of their casks from partners like white peak in england stawning in denmark and starwood in australia they preserve the full story of the makers with their brand new slow whiskey club subscription they are delivering 30 mil pocket pours straight to your door moving whiskey away from an exclusive club towards a form of personal discovery and pleasure.

1:36Georgie Bell:In this episode we talk about the reality of launching a business while welcoming twins, leaving corporate infrastructure behind and why the slow movement is exactly what the modern drinks industry needs. So pour yourself a dram and enjoy. Georgie welcome on People Doing Things. How are you? I'm very well and good thank you. We've just had a very small sip of your Thompson whiskey and your barley whiskey yeah very delicious thank you I'd love to go back in time I guess to your career when you first started and I guess fell in love with whiskey back in Edinburgh yeah so I came into whiskey through bartending and like a lot of people I got into bartending because I needed a job because I needed money because I was a student I think that lineage a lot of people can relate to but rather than just doing bartending and having it being just a part-time job I stepped behind the bar and absolutely fell in love with it I fell in love with the concept of making people's nights through drinks I fell in love with the you know that team work atmosphere I worked in a nightclub was pounding music and the buzz of like being four deep at the bar it was a cocktail nightclub as well shaking up cocktails all over the shot you've got 10 orders in your head you're also dancing to the music with your friends behind the bar you know having sort of a small talk and making people's nights through that I just fell in love with it and I to be honest with you didn't like whiskey the first time I tried it I didn't I didn't think it was for me at the time I was 18 when I was working behind a bar but as I slowly started to enjoy the profession even more and more I realized that I wanted to be the best bartender I could be and for that I needed to be able to give my opinion on every bottle on the back bar and that included whiskey and I love a challenge I also loved education so because I was at university so I set it upon myself to like whiskey by trying to learn as much as I could about every bottle of whiskey we had and I actually began enjoying it through cocktails which is why I'm a huge advocate for whiskey cocktails today as well I think they're not just a great gateway or stepping stone into whiskey but just a really lovely versatile way to enjoy a bottle whiskey doesn't just have to be drunk and eat yeah off the back that I then as I said to geography I ended up doing my dissertation on whiskey and regional identity the creation of an image of the place through the whiskey industry I graduated with geography we joke that we have transferable skills and I knew I wanted a career in whiskey but there was no carved career path I didn't know what was available to me and so I started off on my my own path as it were so I after university I ended up carrying on with bartending but at a whiskey specific bar members club called the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society 200 bottles behind the bar of whiskey and I saw it as an amazing opportunity to build the connection between my brain my nose and my palate to really be able to say what it was that I was smelling and tasting and being able to connect those dots.

5:05I like to say to people, when was the last time that you peeled an orange and you smelt the air around the zest as you were like opening it and then you smelt your fingers afterwards and then you smelt the segment before you put it in your mouth and all of these things are different flavors and aromas and flavor compounds but we don't remember them as much. So that job was exceptional for that. I did a second degree in distilling while I was there to biochemistry and chemical engineering. I'll tell you about the reason for that in a minute. But then I kind of went from there, got a job as their global whiskey ambassador at 24, which is very, very young.

5:44Georgie Bell:And you came first in your class or first in your year. Yeah. Yeah. She says blushing. I don't bring that one up, but yes. The long story very short, after I got a job at the Scotchmore Whiskey Society behind the bar, I wanted to be a whiskey ambassador. I loved the concept of it and I started applying for jobs for some of these bigger companies there was one job in particular to be a whiskey ambassador for a large company based in Scotland and I went for the job and they turned around and they were like you're really great but you just don't have enough experience and it was the most frustrating thing because I was 23 straight out of university I wanted to say to them how much more experience can I have based on my age I would like to see another person's CV who's also my age who's had this much dedication to one spirit bearing in mind it already started sort of my education path within whiskey through WSET courses and then I was like well I'll I'll show you right so I ended up doing yeah the second degree in distilling which I was biochemistry chemical engineering around distilling I ended up doing it in two years instead of three and got the highest mark in the world when I finished that year and got accepted as a freeman into the worshipful company of distillers and that was my opportunity it was almost like me sticking the middle finger up and being like see I told you I could do this yeah whiskey is such a peculiar category it's definitely changed in the last 15 years but when I started out in it I'd say that some of the stereotypes that are still around today were very much around 15 years ago yeah and then I didn't just have to like make space for room at the table for myself I had to like build the chair and then drag it to the table and like elbow people out the way to get my seat at the table you know I think sometimes that challenge makes you even more purposeful and focused yeah on what you want to do so you then went to Diashio yeah and what was that like so I moved to Diageo and I spent I think about three years there I always wanted to work for Diageo one of the biggest in fact the biggest drinks company and my original thinking when I started there was I'll work here for five years learn as much as I can and then go off and do my own thing I didn't do five I did three so then I headhunted and moved over to Bacardi in those three years I learned an awful lot though about different levels of corporateness within big companies.

8:25I learned a lot about structure. I learned an awful lot about marketing. I was their global luxury whiskey ambassador, and there I was traveling eight months of the year for three years. Again, same places all the time, consistently traveling. I think I got not just my 10 ,000 hours, but my 20 ,000 hours talking to people about whiskey, training up local ambassadors, acting as the supporting actor for markets in a way always going to a market working with a local market team trying to leave them in a better place than when I started.

8:58Georgie Bell:And what brands were you working on the most? So I went in to launch Mortlac which was it's a distillery that had been around since 1891 and it was always there in the shadows mainly going into blends had an incredible reputation with whiskey enthusiasts because of its big thick meaty texture and just its production techniques and I was the global luxury whiskey ambassador representing that and launching that across the world nice yeah and then Bacardi and then Bacardi for eight years okay yeah four years as their global whiskey ambassador and then four years as global head of advocacy looking after all of the craft brands at Bacardi.

9:42Georgie Bell:Which were they? Whiskey brands so the whiskey brands they have is Dewars yeah and then five single malts so Aberfeldy, Oldmore, Craig Ellicke, Royal Brackler and the Devrin yeah and then when I moved into the incubation portfolio which is like their craft brands where I was global head of advocacy we also had Angels MV Bourbon, Teeling Irish Whiskey, Saint Germain you might have had a Hugo Spritz it's the drink of the summer yeah I remember was sitting around the table when we were discussing that like three and a half years ago and then I'm seeing the success that that brand team is having it's amazing Oxygen Noiley Pratt so a really lovely collection of brands and did you have a favorite or did you like your darlings equally obviously the whiskeys of course I was actually just over in Kentucky doing some international judging in the end of June and got back to Angel's Envy again which was awesome I love love love that distillery I also though really fell in love with Noilly Pratt the vermouth it's based down in Marseillen in southern France yeah and it's stunning the exceptional sort of not just the location in the distillery but the quality of the vermouth that they're making is wonderful yeah amazing so you officially launched the heart cut the exact same week you had twin girls what was that experience like how did you come to I guess like before that maybe it's interesting to think about like what did the heart cut pre the heart cut look like in your head like when did you first start dreaming about it and perhaps where did the purpose or the big why come from yeah absolutely that's where it's gonna start so a lot of people say to me oh my god you had you founded your business and you had twins the same week and I'm like well it wasn't a surprise I knew the twins were coming I had nine months well eight and a half months to prepare for that Fab my husband and I we started planning the heart cut in 2021 so two years prior to it launching and it's always been my dream to do my own thing within whiskey and in 2019 actually Fab and I started just mood boarding and I actually look back we thought we had a business plan back then of creating our own boutique distillery here in London and I look back at what we thought was our business plan and it was actually just a mood board of pictures and styles and what we wanted it to be like we've had a big learning curve since then trust me but it's always stayed in the back of our mind and in 2021 having spent all of this time in corporate picking things up along the way watching and seeing how the whiskey category has changed the whiskey landscape has changed, the whiskey drinker has changed.

12:28We knew that there was a huge gap in the market, actually. And the hard cut was born from a passion for whiskey, as you can hopefully tell, but also a frustration in there as well, that with all the whiskey out there in the world, there was still this air of exclusivity and jargon and feeling like you had to have a degree to know what you were drinking, right? And still stereotypes around the category, which still exists today. So we wanted to create a modern whiskey house for today's whiskey drinker. We started ideating in 2021 and it took us two years and up until September of 2023 to be able to actually get it into a place to launch.

13:11With whiskey, we're not looking at a spirit which is made today and sold tomorrow. Whiskey by law has to be aged for a minimum of three years till it can be called whiskey in most countries bourbon different laws of course so we're working with distilleries that are all over the world who are dealing with their own different time frames and we're also working within an area of alcohol which also has its own hoops to jump through from a UK government HMRC licensing perspective all of this takes time and on top of that we really wanted to make sure that we were building a brand with integrity and one that actually fit today's drinker properly and wasn't just a carbon copy of what was out there already.

13:59So after all of this, I think we were going to launch in the February of that year, but we couldn't get some of the whiskey over. We launched with a cask from Denmark, a cask from Finland and a cask from London. We can get all the whiskey over in time. I think we're still waiting on licenses. Everything was still up in the air. And of course, we were both working on our corporate day jobs, nine to five, which aren't ever nine to five jobs. But yeah, we launched the hot car in September of 2023. And three days afterwards, we had our twin girls, Isla and Sienna. Isla, of course, Isla, named after Isla.

14:33The island of Isla in Scotland, which is also known for its whiskey. And Sienna, because my husband's Italian and we love that thing. Parenthood is wild. founding a business leaving your corporate jobs is also wild and we just threw the two together um because there's never a perfect time and that definitely wasn't a perfect time but looking back had we not launched the heart cut literally three days beforehand and we'd waited till after the birth it would never have launched yeah and i say that because look i've never had one baby i've only ever had two so I have nothing to compare it against those first five months we were sleeping in two hour blocks you know we were feeding them every three hours because they came up very small we were consistently tired we were juggling we were just living in this one almost like bubble like state but slightly delirious the day that we had them because it was a c-section the morning it was a Friday and I remember that afternoon as the girls were sleeping we were using my hospital bed as an office processing orders and creating Instagram posts to put up online still while having gone through I mean major surgery to have the kids and it just went from there basically

15:49Georgie Bell:that's just the start you know what was the pickup like when you launched and and what was the sales because sometimes you expect to launch something and like you know just sell out but then sometimes it's just tumbleweed I would say depending how you do it yeah we didn't sell out but it wasn't tumbleweed yeah either it was a really it was a really warm reception to what we're doing can I give you a bit of background as to why the heart cut is a bit different and why when we launched there was an air of skepticism but an air of like oh wow that is different so we're an independent bottler which means that we don't own a distillery but we work with distilleries all over the world and we bottle single casks from them the way we operate is like how a gallery owner operates they want to put on an exhibition they work with artists to find pieces of art from their portfolio that help showcase to the world how they see a specific topic within art right we do the same with single casks the single casks are our pieces of art and our distilleries across the world are our artists our portfolio our creative portfolio is our gallery right now the concept of independent bottling isn't new there are independent bottlers that have been around for generations people like Berry Brothers and Rudd Gordon and McPhail and it's not limited to whiskey Waitrose you could say is an independent bottler of wine they have their blueprint labels of wine they say we've worked with this winery to bottle this um abirino it's great i don't know pat and al made this wine it was wonderful and we've bottled it for all intents and purposes that's an independent bottling yeah within the whiskey world when you look at independent bottling for the most part independent bottlers are just focused on scotch for the most part these whiskeys are bottled with jargon at the fore with in jokes plastered all over the labels and the label artworks with no storytelling attached whatsoever a name of the independent bottler in very very small type maybe the distillery that it's come from probably in a disproportionate side the age statement which actually doesn't really mean anything if you don't have cast type or history or distillery behind it and all priced and positioned in a way that you should know what you're talking about before you buy it no hint as to actually what the whiskey tastes like inside.

18:23We founded the HeartCut to inspire a more explorative drinking experience and to celebrate distillers all over the world. So we've launched 24 single casks to date, only three of them have been from Scotland. We've bottled from 19 distilleries across 11 countries. When we launched, we launched with a Danish whiskey, a Finnish whiskey and a London rye whiskey. We didn't launch with three Scotches, in fact no Scotch in sight. And not only that, but our Danish whiskey was a heather smoked single malt finished in a Madeira cask. We're not bringing to the table what everyone else was bringing. We're also doing it in slightly smaller bottles as well, 50 centiliters, not 70 centiliters bottles.

19:06May need to keep the cost down for the drinker so that we can cost it slightly lower. Bringing this all to the market and not coming out with a big scotch name to start made people's heads turn but it also made quite a few people go i don't understand this why are you not bringing out a scotch but actually when you look at the landscape of whiskey today scotland's only one piece of the whiskey puzzle and actually this reflects actually what the landscape is today not what it was 20 years ago so a democratizing force in whiskey exactly and before we launched we took our model to a friend of ours who also owned an independent bottling line and we said to him we've got this idea we've got this concept what do you think and he was like it's great i love it one problem um no scotch one problem no scotch two distilleries don't sell to independent bottlers our whole business model is built on buying directly from distilleries going straight to the artists not going to a broker not going to the artist friend who just has a collection you know we go straight to source and we were told that wasn't possible distilleries didn't do that they're like okay cool we'll give that a try anyway again the challenge comes into play so again we're doing whiskey in a different way we're doing independent bottling in a different way we've not had a problem buying directly from distilleries because we have a model in place where our customer is not just the end drinker, but it's the people that we're buying from as well.

20:40My inbox is filled with emails with producers, and it's actually the producer's best interest that I want to make sure that we're custodians of with these single casts. So, sorry, that was a really long way of answering your question. Yeah, that's great. But I think it's important background because when we launched, there was a lot of excitement, But there was also like, I've never had a single cast from Denmark and a Heather smoked single malt. I like smoky whiskey. But my goodness, is that really for me? I have a background in advocacy. This brand is built on advocacy and marketing and storytelling.

21:18And you can't really do that overnight. Not especially. And you can come from somewhere. You can be the biggest expert within your field. But when you actually start doing something on your own, that's when you really start to realise, like, what is the pull that you have to bring people on a different journey? What has been nice, though, is since building up the heart cut, we've seen people buy every single bottle that we've bought out because they are excited by what we're bringing to the table next, which has been great.

21:48Georgie Bell:That's really exciting. And I imagine amongst the non-Scotches, I imagine their reaction was to really get behind you and what you were doing because it was this unifying force that was going against where you're from and like, I guess, an element of like privilege within that versus kind of where you're going and a more meritocratic perspective on what something is and can be. Yeah, absolutely. We're here to showcase the whole world of whiskey from a flavour, a style and a geography perspective. Success for me is you discovering a new whiskey through us. You said you liked our Ardnamerkin. You'd never heard of that distillery before.

22:31Success for me is now you knowing that distillery name Ardnamerkin and actually going and trying something else from them from their actual range and not just our handpicked single cask. That is what success looks like for me.

22:43Georgie Bell:I mean, you sent me four of them in the post the other day from your whiskey club and they were all delicious. Thanks. Whereas I think sometimes when you have a whiskey from a store or you dig into the back of your dad's cabinet and you pick one out, they're not always great. they don't always have a sort of um that kind of punch and line this to them that i think makes them a bit more interesting or a bit more special or give you a sense of oh this is something different but it can be really nice something different really nice and approachable for you again we built the heart cup to inspire a more explorative drinking experience to democratize whiskey and to help break away that oh it's whiskey it's too strong oh i don't know too much about it oh i don't like whiskey oh no i don't like smoke only a small part of whiskey smoky right we're here to break down those barriers and actually to say to people you we've done our homework you don't have to you have to trust us that every single whiskey that we bring out is of exceptional quality as a new business and you'll know this from speaking to other founders as a new business every single piece you bring out every single touch point has to be 10 out of 10 because as a new business, often every single thing you bring out is a new opportunity for someone to discover you for the first time.

24:07And if they're discovering you through something that's only eight out of 10, they're not going to come back. What with the choice that's available out there at the moment, right? So that every single one we bring out is our reputation on the line. But also, as I said, thinking about the kinship and camaraderie of our industry, also the reputation of that distillery who has allowed us to represent them, actually. I mean, we've bought the single cask, but they don't sell to everybody. With a lot of distilleries that we've partnered with, we're the first people that has ever bottled a single cask from them.

24:41Thompson, this whiskey you tried here, it's the first single cask that's been bottled from them independently outside of New Zealand, right? We have that across the board with a lot of our whiskeys. So there's a lot of responsibility here. but I think again within this category of whiskey we've built the heart cut to give you that shortcut and I'm not afraid to say to someone and this is why we kind of do fun tasting notes on the side of our bottles I'm really not afraid to say to you I don't think you're going to like everything we bottle yeah because we all like different things right but by our approach and by you trying more and more from the four that you tried from us I can go back to my records I can see right you tried those four I've now got an idea of what style of whiskey you like yeah I'm not going to send you the next one if it's not within that bracket but I'll send you the one after that if I think you're going to like it right so it's like tailor-made whiskey approach which I think is what this category needs but with this explorative flavor seeking background because today whiskey drinkers you don't have to love whiskey to like whiskey right whiskey doesn't

25:50Georgie Bell:have to be your whole life to like whiskey a lot of people today again tying into a lot of other food and drink founders people who like often challenger brands who have a story behind them other people who don't mind spending 50p more on a tin of sardines or something like that or when they book a holiday immediately start looking at which restaurants to book or maybe have a coffee subscription or like buying beer from Clapton Craft right that's who the heart cut is for and we've kind of built it in that way so that it is in a language and an accessibility and bottle and flavor and visual and everything format for them and in terms of being like a democratizing force especially from a consumer lens which are the biggest barriers to break or like myths to reverse there's no age statement on the front of our bottles whiskey by law as i said before has to be aged for a minimum of three years to be called whiskey yeah right age and maturity it's not necessarily a sign of quality it's not necessarily a sign of quality but people think it is but people think it is you've got it exactly if a whiskey just has a number on the front of a bottle and no other storytelling of why that whiskey tastes the way it does the story behind in the distillery, what to expect from the bottle.

27:16What the hell does it mean, right? You can say that a whiskey is 10 years old. Great, wonderful, it's 10 years old. Has that been in a fourth fill cask for 10 years? Was that whiskey distilled to the right level to be bought out at 10 years old? New distilleries today aren't distilling with age in mind, they're distilling with flavour in mind.

27:37Georgie Bell:And is that mainly coming from the cask? It's coming from the cask, but also from climate. The whiskey today is made across the world. The climate that the casks are sleeping in in Scotland, in that very cold condition in Scotland, is very different from the climate the casks are sleeping in on the North Island of New Zealand or in India or in Australia, right? Different climate, different reaction of the whiskey inside the cask with the cask itself completely different aging pattern we don't put age statements on the front of our bottle because it doesn't tell you anything you can't compare these numbers you can't take an age statement which has been mainly reserved and judged to by scotch or whiskeys that have been matured in a scottish climate and then expect to apply that to somewhere else around the world it doesn't work that way it's not fair to that whiskey or the distiller's mindset we put aged distilled and aged bottles so you can work it out if you want to we're not gatekeeping it it's there but actually the more important thing on this one that you tried the tasty notes is spiced plum jam wild strawberries dried cherries salted caramel and figs that is more alluring any day than an age statement that says that this is five and a half years old what does five and a half mean versus what do those flavors mean and we actually learned from coffee for those flavor I love coffee I don't know anything about it yeah but I love going into somewhere like a watch house and buying coffee or on the menu and seeing there's like three words for each coffee and I'm like cool I know what I'm I know I know what I'm talking about it's like a shortcut to knowledge and that's what we do with whiskey culturally where would you say our read on curiosity is at the moment and I'll explain this the question there was a time over the past decade, 15 years, we've seen different like craft movements, big beer craft movement, you know, with the kind of rise and fall of people like Brewdog, but obviously at different levels, people became fairly obsessed with craft beer.

29:51Georgie Bell:And I guess that was a reaction to the sort of tepid beers that were on tap at the time that have kind of reinvented themselves now. then there was a craft gin movement which was really big for a lot of people but you know even bigger i think during covid and gin had this kind of huge moment and you got got lots of distilleries being bought and then now it feels like especially in beer it's kind of come back to sort of spanish lagers it feels i think there was an expectation there might be one in you know a rum craft movement that's been on the horizon for a very long time where would you say like our general level of like curiosity is as a kind of culture in the uk but also maybe in other countries in terms of whiskey or just in terms of like what's the current movement and how does whiskey fit in with that uh both okay so i'd be interested to know your thoughts on this i feel like at the moment here we're definitely going through like an rtd craft rtd ready to drink canned cocktail and white box yeah and cocktail and edmunds but we're definitely going through an rtd movement right now which whiskey can play into we spoke before about my obsession with this strawberry negroni and whiskey i'm gonna answer your question but also not answer it so I apologize you can pull me up on this yeah I think we're going through a functional benefit and like a stacked function sort of like collagen creating I joked my husband the other day I was like maybe we should just bring out a whiskey infused with collagen and see how that works within the market but we are going through that at the moment right that's everywhere but we're also going through with a world that is obsessed with phones and rushing around we're obsessed with health and wellness the need to slow down the need to socialize the needs to actually see people in person rather than actually feel like everything has to be done online and the need for connectivity as well I don't know if you've seen that going on but that's definitely here there's an amazing woman called Claire Warner actually who would be great for you to speak to who does a lot of this work actually and looking at the new age of socialising and the need for connectivity and actually alcohol's role within that.

32:25So whiskey's always been there, it will always be there and I definitely think it's growing in interest even more today as people realise that it's just another flavour that is accessible for them. But I also feel, and I'm probably a little bit biased about this, but I think about this quite a lot, that whiskey very very much plays within this area of functional drinking and connection without actually people realising it. In the sense that for me pouring a whiskey is a chance for me to lower my shoulders and of course I love whiskey in a highball and I love whiskey in a strawberry no greenie and I love a whiskey and beer pairing side by side I call it a half and heart and I like to just sip one and sip the other right but I also just love pouring a whiskey and sitting on the sofa or maybe have one while I'm cooking or with friends right we'll say let's go for a whiskey it's kind of like some people say let's go for a pint we're like should we just go for a whiskey and slowly chat a whiskey that would take 20-30 minutes to drink a whiskey that one dram of whiskey 25 more pour is one unit one pint is often two and a half units I'm talking something strong

33:38Georgie Bell:here even though people think risky is strong do you think it's more of an individual drink or do you see within your data sets that it's a you know something that people share and discuss because i think you know a lot of the craft movements that have become these kind of big things and created momentum there is a level of like socializing within it that helps inspire the movement so So beer is a very social drink. People can have it together. They can obsess over it. They can try different things. Gin plays out, I think, in a different way. I think that's more like home counties. People are coming over.

34:22They're going, oh, I've got this lovely gin to try.

34:25Georgie Bell:And they're pouring each other a thing. And they're having their friends round. And it's a cocktail before a dinner. And they move on to something else. whiskey for me has usually been not always because i think my brother got me into it um initially and it was quite a nice thing for us to do together i like the individualistic aspect of it yeah the drop your shoulders that it's quite a pensive drink i would say and i can imagine couples getting into it together like especially oh we've got this new thing she'll sit down she've drop shoulders together that sort of thing i like can definitely see that do i see groups may coming over maybe maybe you know older older people maybe they're coming over poker night have you ever been to a whiskey show no yeah we need to get you to a whiskey show have you ever been to a whiskey club when i did some work on whiskey me who you know i think we went to one of the whiskey bars that here black rock yeah i was about that was going to be my next question have you been to a whiskey bar yeah yeah there are these spaces and actually oh so we're coming up to whiskey season you know we're about to go into september october november december ond as we like to call it that's the big whiskey season even though whiskey is drunk all year round and our july sales were astonishing which kind of bucks the trend right we're about to go into a season of whiskey shows up and down the UK and at these whiskey shows the demographic is not what you think and it's not just people there by themselves but it is camaraderie and it's people going there as groups to discover it's groups of friends it's partners it's sometimes people by themselves as well but it very much leans into that there's also whiskey clubs up and down the UK again you'd be surprised some of the demographics and some of the layouts of these clubs you wouldn't be surprised by.

36:25I would be lying if I said that I was never the only woman in a room of these clubs and I was never the youngest person in the room. That would be a total lie. But they are changing. And actually going to your friends, having a dinner party, having friends over, pouring a whiskey after dinner, making a round of old fashions after dinner to have instead of a dessert or maybe pairing with dessert, going out for dinner and having a little whiskey afterwards. Maybe you're going to a cocktail bar beforehand and you go to Lioness on the South Bank they have a highball on menu with barley and it tastes like strawberries and cream in a barbecue at Wimbledon whiskey is unexpected it is multifaceted it's multi-layered I think it's a really good way you put that though in terms of social movement no we definitely don't have what's going on within craft beer like wow what a showing with craft beer but i would say definitely craft gin yeah yeah it's there especially here in england too you know there's now over 70 distilleries in england and counting over 40 of them have got their own whiskey out on the market the other 30 are still aging and so you know i i think whiskey is definitely it's growing it's growing it's growing do you see or

37:45Georgie Bell:perhaps did you see any differences amongst populations within countries? Yeah so I mean whiskey attitudes change all across the world I find it so interesting I obviously don't do as much traveling now the Heartcut is a UK-based company so we at UK DTC we were doing a bit in Europe last year but when I was traveling I was going to China to Japan Thailand Malaysia Vietnam I mean all over the world but those countries in particular had a very different attitude to drinking whiskey as we do over here in short everyone's drinking it and there's a different mindset to it there's a different way of mixing it over here we have stereotypes as I've said a few times before because I think it's so important to bring them up to be able to bash them because when you actually voice something you realize how ridiculous it actually is to be there in the first place but over there people are drinking whiskey with ice with water in a highball with soda with coconut water have you had a whiskey and coconut water before oh my god it's the best whiskey and green tea whiskey and coke it doesn't matter it's bottle service all over the place there's no stereotypes around whether it's a blend or a single malt yes there is the piece on age statements but it's fine because there are these other attitudes in place and I think that's so wonderful to see and it's so refreshing as well and then two final questions first what have been the biggest highs and lows since starting the heart cart after we started the heart cart after six months we won world's best independent bottler at the global icons of whiskey awards many independent bosses have been doing this for decades and since then we've gone on to win it two more subsequent times so we've won this award globally three times in two and a half years of business and that's our industry saying to us thumbs up we like what you're doing you're on the right track.

39:54I think being a founder as well gives you resilience. It gives you the toughest of skin possible. And it also makes you take feedback very well. You can't be too precious. And I think what we've been really lucky with at the HeartCart is to surround ourselves with very smart people who know what they're doing, who have maybe walked founder's shoes before or been incredibly specialised within their field and high up within their field. And I'd say a high from the heart cut over the last three years is to not only have this group of incredible advisors around us, but for both Fab and I to be able to listen without taking...

40:42Georgie Bell:Taking it too personally. Taking it too personally and using that feedback to help build the heart cut, which has been really nice, really nice. It's amazing when you're pouring so much passion and truth and sort of being so genuine into a brand and actually a brand that does have backing and is needed today. It's amazing how generous people can be with their time and with their thoughts when they know that you're not just going to listen to it and ignore it. And so that would be an absolute high as well. We've definitely learned a lot of lessons along the way and we're still learning, we're only three years into business.

41:19I wouldn't say it's a low, but definitely something that is not a hindrance, but something that's a frustration operationally. I'd be interested if you've heard this from other founders, is MOQs. As a founder of a challenger brand, you are in this consistent circle of action, listening, learning, acting, action, listening learning acting right and you're reacting and you're consistently changing and you're putting out a b not even a b test but trial after trial after trial to see not even to see what sticks is calculated and if you're working on something with an moq and you commit to that and then two weeks later you're like oh my god we've actually just learned something new that moq on the piece of design work that we've just done we can't use that anymore it's not actually right for us that's been a piece read um it's amazing book before we started called the lean startup i don't know if you've read it it's that and the founder's dilemma two tech-based books that are exceptional and they talk about lean startups and doing lean and minimal viable products and all this sort of stuff which we've definitely played with but when you come to moqs you just want to hit your head against the wall sometimes and then finally what are you most excited about going forward what's on the vision list so we have just launched our slow whiskey club which is our subscription service which is through the pocket pours that we sent to you those 30 ml pours we send out two a month to people with a whole story behind why we chose that distillery why that whiskey is so great nuggets of information like barstool stories that you could literally very easily tell your brother or someone else about them so i'm really excited to see that grow and grow now that we have had mvp run with it and yeah we're three years in i feel like the first two years we were still learning how to take a business plan from paper and put it into real life we're still definitely learning we've just had a month of just working on strategy in august and taking fully step backs as to what's important and what can we say no to and what do we need to do to grow what new releases have we got coming up how do we need to make sure we put them under the right spotlight so i'm actually feeling really excited about the next well four months i'm kind of because we're going into the busiest whiskey season my head is currently up until January I've got a few things playing out in my head after January

44:00Georgie Bell:but I just need to focus on this yeah yeah yeah I think getting to year three like you sort of need three years in business to work out whether you have a business yeah um and I think that by year three you should know or founders should know whether you've got a business that's scalable or not yeah and also whether you found product market fair yeah and I think that's why you're you know year three is usually a scary year sometimes it's a really scary thank you year three is a really scary year we've made some really big decisions over the last year and we've had a few big realizations we've just brought a chairwoman into play who's amazing and she's pushing us and challenging us on all the right things that we need to be pushed and challenged on because she's saying we're coming to to a point in which we can grow and we have answered those questions and we are at that point yeah you're kind of looking out not over a cliff that sounds really ominous but like i feel like that often a different landscape yeah so again having come out just a month of just like heads down and stress you i'm really excited but yeah big plans ahead nice well thank you so much for um sharing your lovely whiskey for me and for coming on People Doing Things.

45:16Thank you.

45:18Georgie Bell:That was Georgie Bell, founder of The Heart Cut on People Doing Things. As always, I've been your host, Ed Little. And if you are feeling particularly generous of spirit, reviews go a long way to helping this podcast grow. So please head over to Spotify or Apple and leave one. People Doing Things, on a mission to celebrate and inspire the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Time