Old Orkney

Very early on in the Decadent Drinks story, Angus had the idea to see if he might be able to buy the historic, but long dormant, Old Orkney brand. AKA: 'Double O'. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  

The reason for this is that one of the big influences upon Angus' approach to bottling and branding, was the old 'Double O.O.' brand. It was originally the bottling brand of Stromness Distillery on Orkney, which sadly closed in 1928. After that time the brand quickly fell into dormancy and was used only very sporadically in the intervening decades.  

Old Orkney was a brand well ahead of its time. It put humour and mischief at the heart of its identity in the form of wonderful original artworks on posters and advertising. Often balancing that with strikingly beautiful, minimalist and powerful bottle labels. The brand celebrated Orkney, nature, the outdoors, romance, humour and fun. Most importantly, the whisky behind the brand, inside the bottles was of astonishing quality. In this regard, it shared so many aspects with what we have tried to create with Decadent Drinks. This was why Angus wanted to see if he could get the brand and re-introduce it. Rather miraculously, he was successful in this endeavour!   

Once safely acquired, we initially we did some tentative playing with the Old Orkney brand iconography by mixing it with our Whisky Sponge brand across a sub-series of three bottlings we called 'Orkney Sponge'. Before deciding to just faithfully re-introduce the brand itself, using Orkney single malts as the content, and giving it an artistic approach that celebrated the original brand sensitively, while putting our own Decadent Drinks creative spin on it.  

Alongside Whiskyland, Decadent Drams and Equinox & Solstice, Old Orkney will be one of our four key brands as we go forward over the coming five years. It's a brand we love and that we are having a lot of fun re-introducing slowly to the whisky world. We've no plans to do 'loads' of Double O.O. bottlings, but whenever we source another delicious Orkney single malt, you can be sure we'll present it as another beautiful and fun Double O.O. release.