The Drinks Business year in review: 2025
It’s been another big year for the drinks business, and we round up some of the high points, from our record number of page views to reaching a new peak for our Global Wine Masters competition series.
In terms of printed magazines, db has been as active as ever in 2025, compiling 12 editions during the course of the year, none containing fewer than 124 pages of content, mixing news analysis, trade comment, tasting notes and up-to-date, referential material on the industry.
In addition to these have been a further six issues of the drinks business Asia for our readers in the Far East and Mainland China, as well as three specialist reports, which in 2025 covered Italy, Spain and Champagne,
We also published our guide to the best cellar hands in the business, with our Master Winemaker 100 – a 250-page booklet profiling the winners in our Global Wine Masters for the previous year.
In addition to all this printed content, has been the wide variety of writings on thedrinksbusiness.com, which has played host to almost 3,500 stories in 2025, attracting well over 12 million page views during the course of the year from nearly five million active users.
We’ve also increased our audio offering through the website and beyond, with over 30 podcasts featuring on db.com but also the likes of Acast and Spotify, including our new interview format, Desert Island Drinks, which sees a range of high profile guests choose their ultimate wines and spirits for taking with them as fictitious castaways.
As for our competition series, The Global Wine Masters, we ran over 33 tastings in 2025, seeing us professionally assess around 3,500 bottles, following our usual format, which is ‘blind’, using experienced Master of Wine judges – and you can see the best performers of the year by clicking here.
Beyond this, we also attended every major drinks trade exhibition worldwide, while staging over 70 events in 2025.
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As part of this active programme, we’ve been right around the UK, from Edinburgh to the south and west, as well as across Europe – with events in Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Cannes, Paris and Verona – along with much further afield, having put on masterclasses for industry professionals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
We also ran a major event in London with our annual Drinks Business Conference at London’s Science Gallery, in which we tackled the key topic of profitability in a down market.
Finally, we’ve hosted a few consumer events this year, notably in the City of London and Oxford, as we extended our formula of presenting wines in an educational manner directly to the public – albeit high-net-worth wine lovers.
While we’ve worked hard to ensure the drinks business provides all the information needed for any serious industry professional – both on a range of platforms and in different formats – we have also invested much time and effort to promote the interests of our trade.
Whether that has been helping to expose the damage caused by increased taxation and regulation to businesses and their employees, or the impact of alarmist and often unfounded commentary on the health risks of drinking, we have tried to present a fair view featuring the facts.
As part of this we have made it our major focus for 2025 to stand up for the right to drink without guilt, because it is our belief that in a world where very few are blind to the risks of excessive boozing, mature adults don’t need to be told how to imbibe.
In other words, responsible individuals should not feel shamed into giving up the delicious, heart-warming, pleasure of drinking, particularly in a social setting.
So, with that said, we wish all our readers a very happy Christmas with friends and family, as well as fine wines and spirits.
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Merry Christmas from the drinks business
