Georgie Collins

Georgie Collins is digital editor at The Spirits Business, covering the global spirits and hospitality industry with a focus on brand marketing, market performance and bar culture. She works as a drinks journalist, copywriter and editor with more than 10 years of experience writing about the global spirits and hospitality trade. Her coverage blends data-led news, personality-driven features and curated digital round-ups that track how brands, bars and events shape contemporary drinking culture.

SB meets… the founders of World Martini Day

Collins uses interview-led features to explore how personalities and concepts drive engagement around drinks occasions and cocktail culture.

In her SB Meets piece with the founders of World Martini Day, she focuses on the story behind a themed celebration, the motivations of its creators and how it connects with bartenders, brands and consumers. That format extends into profiles such as her feature on Emilio Giovanazzi leading the next chapter at Gleneagles, where she examines hospitality leadership, guest experience and the positioning of an iconic property in the wider luxury travel and drinks landscape. Across these pieces she treats drinks and venues as parts of a broader hospitality ecosystem, linking individual initiatives and careers to shifts in how people experience spirits and cocktails.

Spirits sales fall 2.2% in US in 2025

Collins covers core trade news with an emphasis on data, market trends and regulatory or cultural context.

In her report on spirits sales falling 2.2% in the US in 2025, she foregrounds category-wide performance figures and breaks down movements across segments, giving industry readers a clear sense of where growth is slowing or shifting. She complements these numbers with references to wider developments, such as changing consumer behaviour, competitive pressure from other drink categories and the role of pricing and taxation, keeping the focus on implications for producers and distributors.

This approach recurs in her work highlighting the stories that dominate the publication’s traffic, where she pulls together acquisitions, brand refreshes and notable new launches to show how commercial decisions and product strategy filter into the news cycle.

SB’s most-read stories in February

As digital editor, Collins regularly curates and interprets site-wide coverage, using traffic round-ups to signal what the trade is paying attention to. In SB’s most-read stories in February, she revisits recent headlines on acquisitions, brand refreshes and new pours, highlighting the developments that resonated most with readers. The piece functions both as a digest and as a temperature check on the industry, drawing links between corporate deals, portfolio changes and innovation in categories such as whisky, Tequila and ready-to-drink cocktails. This curatorial work sits alongside her role in broader digital strategy, where she is listed as a key editorial contact in multiple media packs and presented as responsible for the title’s online presence and coverage. Together, these responsibilities position her as a central filter for trade-facing spirits news, both commissioning and writing content and then stepping back to analyse its reception.

Booze banter: SB’s favourite festive spirits

Collins also writes lighter, personality-led content that showcases products and explores how people drink spirits in social and seasonal contexts.

In Booze banter: SB’s favourite festive spirits, she contributes to a round-up of staff picks, presenting specific bottlings and explaining what makes them well suited to end-of-year celebrations. The tone is conversational but remains grounded in product detail, reflecting an understanding of flavour profiles, brand positioning and use occasions that is consistent with her trade coverage. This consumer-adjacent angle bridges her marketing beat, where she reports on activations such as 818 Tequila dominating Coachella’s first weekend, Master of Malt bringing ’90s football nostalgia to its range and a Botivo collaboration tapping into themes of female sensuality.

Across these stories she tracks how brands deploy culture, nostalgia and experiential campaigns to stay visible in a crowded market.

Marketing, collaborations and hospitality stories

Much of Collins’s recent work sits in the publication’s marketing coverage, where she follows how spirits and drinks brands use partnerships, venues and events to build identity. Her stories on the Coral Room menu warning guests to “gird your loins”, a potential move to make rye whiskey the official spirit of the US, and a collaboration-driven female sensuality campaign for Botivo each show how she connects creative concepts to commercial and reputational goals. She also reports on sponsorships and tournaments, such as coverage of a rum brand backing a major sailing week and a scandal-linked archived story that rose into the publication’s most-read list, treating them as part of the long tail of brand visibility and narrative.

Alongside these pieces, her feature on Gleneagles and its leadership demonstrates an ability to step into broader hospitality storytelling, looking at how venues, service and spirits lists work together to define an experience. This mix of marketing news, collaboration reporting and venue-focused features marks her out from a purely product-led food and drink reporter, making her coverage especially relevant where stories touch the intersection of brand strategy, on-trade experience and digital audience behaviour.