Whiskey

The event, dubbed “Taste the Doom” in what one fears is only a tangential sense of irony, is hosted by Lars Lundehave Hansen and Peter Voltava aka Pure. The €23 tickets come in the form of elegantly scripted invitations, and the crowd is capped at 30 people – things must remain civilised, after all – who each get seven drams of whiskey, mostly rare and small-batch, paired with tracks by pessimistically named bands like Corrupted, Buried at Sea, Sunn O))) and Sink.

Not all the hooch hails from the Highlands: standouts from last edition were peated single-malts from Ireland (Connemara) and India (Amrut). Between snifters, Hansen makes cute little introductory speeches, saying things like, “It’s so smoky – you’re going to fucking love it!” (about the exceptional Kilchoman Vintage 2006) to the group of variably tattooed, almost entirely black-clad would-be connoisseurs. And Hansen is right: they do fucking love it. After all, why should yuppies, with their woefully doom-free champagne tastings and educational cheese flights, have a monopoly on preciously curated consumption?

Taste the Doom | Das Gift, Donaustr. 119, Neukölln, U-Bhf Rathaus Neukölln, More info at www.tastethedoom.com