Our History
Decadent Drinks began life, by accident, in 2018. It started as a conversation between its founders, Angus MacRaild and Iain McClune. Iain asked Angus if he would be interested to collaborate / experiment with some indy bottling, with the intention that it was very much as a side project for both of them. Angus, at that time, had been writing a popular satirical blog called 'Whiskysponge' for a number of years and had been separately thinking it might be fun to use it as a label for an indy bottling of some sort, but this was never more than a notional idea. As it turned out: Iain had some casks, Angus had some ideas, and the first 'Whisky Sponge' bottlings emerged from these discussions in January 2019.
From there, and very quickly given it was all happening during the very strange time that was the pandemic, the Whisky Sponge series took off. During this early era this was still a bit of a side project for everyone involved, but we soon added our first employee and by September 2020, Decadent Drinks had been formally incorporated and - to paraphrase Gandalf - the board was set, the pieces were moving...
We soon added a new brand into the mix, Equinox & Solstice, and spent the next couple of years diversifying our 'Spongiverse'. Adding side series such as Rum Sponge, Cognac Sponge, Armagnac Sponge and Wine Sponge. The intention during this time was to create a bottling 'world' featuring our main brand character 'The Sponge'. Everything went considerably faster than we all expected and we realised that, as our fifth year hove into sight, we were also coming up to our 100th Edition of Whisky Sponge.
Angus, as the creator of Whisky Sponge (which functioned as a sort of 'alter ego' for him) decided that, rather than let the series run on in perpetuity, he would rather conclude it while it was still strong and use the opportunity to demonstrate that Decadent Drinks wasn't a one trick pony. To show that the company could refresh itself and offer something new, but that still had many of the same qualities of inventiveness and humour that people enjoyed about Whisky Sponge. Enter Whiskyland...
As we celebrate our fifth anniversary and look ahead to the next five years, we've concocted and launched our new flagship brand: Whiskyland. A set series of just 100 'Chapters', to feature only our highest quality and very best whiskies we can source, and designed as a world that functions as a character in itself. Alongside our new 'all encompassing' series, Decadent Drams, and our existing Equinox & Solstice and Old Orkney brands, this quartet of brands will form the foundations of Decadent Drinks as we go forward through the next five years.
After that? Who knows! We will just have to come up with something else.
