Billing itself as the “world’s first whisky tasting accompanied by doom, drone and sludge metal”, the bimonthly event held in the back room of Neukölln haunt Das Gift has quickly become the neighbourhood’s hottest ticket, thirstily snatched up by ageing bobo-cores eager to combine their love for loud, soul-crushing music with a burgeoning taste for delightfully peaty, perfectly balanced, 50-bucks-a-bottle single-malt Scotch.
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
