A Decadent Evening of Whisky with Angus MacRaild

Angus MacRaild has spent more time with old whisky than almost anyone working in the trade today. He started out as a tour guide, moved into retail, then spent years as a specialist at two auction houses — which is another way of saying he has nosed and tasted the bottles most of us only ever read about.

These days he runs Decadent Drinks, writes the gleefully irreverent Whisky Sponge, and is building Kythe Distillery around a slightly heretical idea: that whisky made the old way simply tasted better, and there is no good reason we cannot make it that way again.

This is an evening in his company. Old-style whisky is his territory — the argument that slower fermentations, worm tubs and less efficient everything left a depth of flavour that modern production has quietly engineered out. He is not romantic about it. He will tell you plainly when a dusty old bottle has simply gone tired. But when he pours something you would struggle to find anywhere else and explains exactly what you are smelling and why nothing tastes like that now, the penny drops.

He is also very good company. No lecture. No scoring grids. No reverent hush. Just a genuinely funny Scot who happens to know an extraordinary amount, talking you through a line-up he has chosen himself.

Thirty-five places at £80. Whether you have been curious about old whisky and had no idea where to start, or you have been collecting for years and fancy arguing with someone who knows more than you do — this is the room.