Archived Brands
Decadent Drinks has been active as a bottler now for just over five years. We've been very busy in that time and done a lot of bottlings. As part of planning for our future, we recently reorganised our brands and defined very clearly what our brand portfolio will look like for at least the coming five years. However, as part of that, we put to bed some other brands at the same time.
Whisky Sponge
The name that started it all. Angus started writing the Whiskysponge blog back in 2013, like a lot of things he's done in his career, it began as a bit of an experiment without any kind of grand master plan behind it. The Sponge was essentially supposed to be an alter-ego for Angus and a means for him to write in a certain, frequently scathing, satirical style. There were never any plans for it to become anything more than that.
Fast forward to 2018, however, and the idea arose to use Whiskysponge as a brand name for a bottling series and, lo and behold, 'Whisky Sponge' - the brand - was born. The concept was to transplant the same sense of humour, the same tone and the same playfulness behind Sponge onto a bottling series, using a combination of original artworks and writing.
As of 2024, the Sponge series has been concluded at Edition 100. However, there's also Cognac Sponge, Armagnac Sponge, Rum Sponge, Wine Sponge, Orkney Sponge, Islay Sponge, Westie Sponge as well as various Special Edition Sponges, Secret Sponges, Exclusive Sponges and random one-offs such as Apero Sponge and Whiskey Sponge. We don't yet actually know how many Sponge bottlings there are in total, but at present count we think around 228.
One of the reasons we stopped, is that we felt we had successfully created what we set out to do: a 'Spongeverse'! A big, muddled, fantastically sprawling and diverse bottling 'realm' starring this enigmatic and frequently ridiculous character 'Whisky Sponge'.
We don't know if he's gone forever, but we do know he isn't dead. So, who knows what the future holds for Sponge, but last we saw him, he was exiting our Universe and travelling to another, distant dimension. Probably one without internet, knowing him.
Notable Age Statements
This was a short run series of nine bottlings that we created to celebrate and showcase the importance of time and age, and especially how it's a unifying factor of great importance to all the various spirits we love.
NAS was intended as a fun riff on 'Non Age Statement', which has rather negative connotations in whisky and spirits culture. We thought, why not 'reclaim' the acronym 'NAS' for appreciators of age, time and quality in spirits. Whether old, or young, age is foundational to the character and profile of the spirits we all love to drink. That was the inspiration for our Notable Age Statement series, and we are very proud of the nine, highly diverse examples we put out across the span of this brand.
As of 2024, Notable Age Statements has been quietly retired for the time being as we wanted to focus on our core four brands for the second era of Decadent Drinks: Whiskyland, Decadent Drams, Equinox & Solstice and Old Orkney. However, we can't say for certain that the right spirit won't tempt us to revisit this brand and make it a perfect set of ten bottlings. So, you never know!