What does “Decadence” mean to you? We love the chain of association that leads to luxury, beauty, and excess. It’s highly fertile territory for art… and whisky.

Oscar Wilde wrote that “we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” The age in question was the late nineteenth century when the Aesthetic Movement in the art world yearned for pure visual delight.

The Aesthetic Movement gave rise to the Decadent Movement, with artists layering influences from around the world. For those of a Decadent sensibility, more was always more. The unnecessary flourish became the most important thing of all – is something delighted you, that was the only justification required for its existence.

Art & Decadence is decked out delight. We have taken glossily sweet grain whiskies and combined them with unseated malt whiskies matured in American oak barrels, sherry-seasoned butts, and malt whisky finished in not one but three varieties of dessert wine cask. Like we said, more is more.

With the Decadent Movement, art was made for the sake of art; there were no ulterior motives. Similarly. A whisky like Art & Decadence may not be strictly a necessity -and that is the whole, glorious point.

The Extinct Blends Quartet

Fashions change, and formulae suit. Blended whiskies of the 1970s, ’80s, and ‘90s are very different from today’s versions, even when the brand name remains the same. The Extinct Blends Quartet as it unfolds will reimagine four of our favorite blended Scotches from yesteryear, using some of our rarest and most idiosyncratic stocks of whisky.

Celestial

Across the four releases, we have also conjured up different regions and elements of the blended Scotch whisky world. From its beginnings with Ultramarine and the wild coasts, we end with Celestial and a headlong flight through the clouds.

The Blended Scotch Whisky from which we have drawn our inspiration for Celestial was also associated with travel, albeit of the terrestrial kind, and was born in an era that depended on horsepower in its most literal sense. Celestial boasts more pettiness than the extinct blend in question, drawing on malt whiskies from Ardbeg and Carl Ila Distilleries.

The combination of smoke and succulent fruit is truly otherworldly, depicted in the coils and columns of cloud shown on the label. A gleaming brightness is provided by malt whiskies from Glen Elgin and Pulteney distilleries, a quality we have chosen to represent with the constellations.