03/03/2023

Chapter 8

A chat with... Angus MacRaild (Decadent Drinks) - #4

Decadent Drinks is small company that does independent bottlings of fine spirits and other drinks. Mostly whisky as well as rum, cognac and armagnac. They’re based in Perth, Scotland and release new bottlings every month via their website, retail partners and international importers.

Their name is not by chance, and wants to remind us that our (often) hard and stressful lives can also have, quoting from their website, “little islands of decadence and joy that make life worth living“, such as a good moment of relax or a good drink, a decadent drink.

Their mission is to create high quality and delicious products able to provide pleasure and joy. This is achieved by offering brilliant liquids inside the bottles and original and always fun, artworks outside them, which I will cover in my next chapter dedicated to the Art of Whisky Labelling.

I had the pleasure to chat a bit with its founder Angus MacRaild.

Let’s see what he told us…

Hi Angus, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Please introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about your whisky journey so far.

My name is Angus MacRaild, I’m a writer, independent bottler and ‘general whisky person’.

I was fascinated by whisky from a very young age, really through being interested in Scotland and Scottish things, and also the fact my Dad liked a Laphroaig every now and then and I was always interested in what he was doing.

So from there as I got older I read quite a few books and eventually went looking for work at Ardbeg while I was at university.

That was probably the proper start of my whisky journey .

When and how did you join this growing industry?

My first job was as a tourguide at Ardbeg during my summer breaks at university in 2005 and 2006.

I also worked in Glasgow wine merchants like Oddbins and Peckhams which was really great.

But I suppose my first ‘proper’ full time whisky job was as a whisky specialise for an auction house, which I started when I returned from a year travelling abroad in 2011. From there my present career just kind of developed and evolved organically – I never really had a grand masterplan.

Now tell us a bit more about Decadent Drinks and the Whisky Sponges, what is it that makes them stand out in the whisky industry?

Decadent Drinks is still a young company, we started during the pandemic so a lot has changed and evolved very fast.

I had a bit of an idea at the start that I wanted to do a series of bottlings with Whisky Sponge, but of course things change as you go along and the business develops. I think the main thing about Decadent Drinks, and especially about our brand Whisky Sponge, is that we take quality very seriously, but we don’t take life too seriously.

We try to exude a sense of fun and to have fun with how we describe, present and sell our products. I hope that we manage to make interesting and good quality selections of a broad range of spirits and drinks, and to present them in ways which are a bit different and stand out from other companies.

I think we have achieved that, but we’re developing and changing all the time so who knows what things will look like a year from now.

Can you tell us what Decadent Drinks' target audience is?

Educated lovers of delicious drinks who like to enjoy life, share great experiences with their friends and have a good, mischievous sense of humour.

Or in one word: niche!

Can you tell us how you select your casks, and anticipate anything about what we can expect to see next?

Selection is really about judgement and taste. We don’t have a huge warehouse to select from, we have to buy a lot of things ‘blind’ and we have to try and use our experience and instinct to source what we think will be high quality products.

For example, we will buy from a broad range of places such as auctions, brokers, private individuals and distilleries, and we will always try and use our best judgement possible when buying something.

For us it needs to either be a strong reflection of my personal taste and preference, a clearly very strong and clear example of one particular style, or perhaps a rather extreme and fascinating dram that will provoke different reactions and opinions in drinkers.

As for what’s coming next, we have a couple of stunning Rums. A 1997 Clarendon that had over 22 years tropical ageing, which we used part of to create a second bottling which is a marriage of that Clarendon with some 1997 Caroni – so that Special Edition Rum Sponge is due shortly .

On the whisky side of things there’s a very cool, and quite unique, 1992 Glen Moray 30 year old and also a really lovely 2007 Croftengea – a more simple whisky but a really delicious and I think pretty good value dram.

What advice would you give to a beginner that is approaching this world and perhaps starting his/her own collection?

Try to taste and read a lot.

Share experiences with your friends and make it a social hobby; listen to their opinions as well as your own and always try to keep an open mind.

Remember that there are other stunning spirits out there such as Cognac, Armagnac and Rum, and that a knowledge of and passion for them compliments a love of whisky extremely well.

If you are buying and collecting bottles, try to buy bottles you love and would be happy and excited to open. Loving the liquid is the best route to creating a special collection I would say.

Lastly, what is, generally speaking, your favourite whisky style (cask type, ageing, peated/unpeated etc.)? What’s your dram of choice at the moment and/or your go to drams on a Friday evening?

My favourite style is tricky. If I had to choose I would describe it as a 1950s and 1960s style of peated malt whisky production, so a flavour profile that contains peat, but peat manifest via distinctive peat bog sources and the use of onsite floor maltings.

That coupled with a lot of exotic fruit character in the distillate and flavours and textures that you could describe as waxy.

In specific whisky terms I would say Bowmore, Laphroaig, Highland Park, Talisker and Longmorn from those decades express these qualities most vividly and with the most beauty.

That profile I enjoy from most cask types, but my absolute favourite would be refill wood, either sherry or ex-bourbon. Just a plain hogshead with the most stunning distillate is the epitome of brilliance in whisky to me.

Dram of choice at the moment, and also my Friday evening dram, is an old bottle of Oban 12 year old from the 1970s that I bought at auction recently. Also a Bunnahabain 12yo from the 1980s.

The Oban is just gorgeous, fat, peppery and waxy whisky, lots of distillate character and very coastal. The Bunna is more sherry driven but also has these qualities of amazing distillery character and a very evocative coastal quality.

They are also only 40% and 43% respectively, which makes them perfect for simple, pleasurable dramming. I often just have a dram of them in a tumble which itself is a perfectly simple, easy and pleasurable way to experience them.