Johnnie Walker launches The Ruby Lounges with Mr Lyan
Diageo-owned Johnnie Walker will host a series of educational experiences across key UK cities curated by globally-renowned bartender Ryan ‘Mr Lyan’ Chetiyawardana.
Celebrating the arrival of Johnnie Walker Black Ruby into the UK on-trade, Chetiyawardana, alongside Johnnie Walker brand ambassadors Adam Hussein and Stefanie Anderson, will seek to inspire and empower bartenders with a series of educational sessions that will equip them with the skills needed to deliver the ‘ultimate’ Black Ruby guest experience, while also enhancing their own professional development.
Speaking exclusively to The Spirits Business, Chetiyawardana explains that these sessions, known as The Ruby Lounges, will emphasise creativity, storytelling, and locality while also exploring preservation techniques and the importance of community and diversity in the drinks industry.
“The collaboration with Johnnie Walker is something that we’ve been working on for a number of years,” he says. “We’ve been very, very close to the brand, and I think we’ve always shared this mutual love of trying to push the conversations around Scotch forward.
“I’ve always been really excited by the diversity of flavour in Scotch, and when Johnnie Walker Black Ruby came along, it was a really exciting moment for me. Not only because Dr Emma Walker has been somebody that I’ve known for a number of years and admired hugely in terms of her work, but as her first iteration of Black Label, it was really exciting to try something that really pushed some of the things that I find very exciting in Scotch forwards.”
Chetiyawardana explains that Johnnie Walker Black Ruby has an “incredible vibrancy”, describing the blend as both bold and creamy, and a product that can be used as a tool for bartenders to demonstrate the flavours that are available in Scotch while also being dynamic enough to push cocktail culture forward and recruit more people to the category.
With this in mind, he explains that when it came to curating the educational experiences of The Ruby Lounges, it was important to design the sessions so that they don’t “feel like a chore”, but rather feel immersive and practical for bartenders, enabling them to take away something they can apply in their own space.
“We really want the sessions to be something that helps bartenders understand Scotch whisky, and what is happening in terms of the flavours there, while giving them something that they can be inspired by, so they can then apply some of these different techniques and approaches to their own bars.”
Flavour workshops
Alongside the hands-on cocktail sessions, bartenders will join Chetiyawardana for a personal brand-building workshop and open Q&A, offering attendees a rare chance to learn directly from one of the industry’s most influential innovators. The day will also include food and drink pairings, a Diageo World Class alumni takeover, and a ‘creative Ruby’ session.
But at the heart of these gatherings will sit the Flavour Workshop, where guests will explore hyper locality, seasonality, and inventive ways to harness, preserve and layer flavour.
“You know, bartenders are well versed in the idea of flavour and making things feel meaningful for their guests. But it’s also very easy to fall into a kind of formula, to think ‘Scotch whisky tastes this way, therefore I use it in these applications’.” He says the idea behind these workshops is therefore to “push this idea of flavour and technique and go beyond what they might have experienced or thought about in terms of whisky; to make them feel more confident and empower them to look at their own stories, explore what’s local to them, their own problems, their own excitement around the flavours they get to work with, and put it through the lens of their venue and their personal approach to making drinks.”
One key focus of the Flavour Workshop is the concept of ‘cheating time’ in the context of flavour and preservation. Chetiyawardana explains that this will examine the principles of what happens through the process of ageing spirits, and explore if there are other ways of applying it to juxtapose or ‘cheat’ time. This, he says, is about getting people to think “more deeply on their ingredients” and consider how they change as they move through their life cycle. “Rose buds taste very different to rose leaves,” he explains, adding that an ingredient’s ‘ripeness’ can also affect the flavours it offers.
He adds: “It’s also about asking how can we capture stuff and preserve it during the fleeting moments of a plant’s life cycle? How can we find ways to extend the season through traditional preservation techniques, like fermenting, smoking, salting, sugaring; extracting flavours, but also asking how we can apply the mentality of the emotion of some of these ingredients to new spaces. How do you take the vibrancy of summer and apply it during a winter period so you can transport people? Really, I suppose, it’s about bottling that idea of a sense of time and place, and finding ways to be able to use it as a jumping off point for conversations, or to add a different depth or resonance to your drinks.”
Underscoring these workshops is the ‘Lyan’ approach that Chetiyawardana applies to all of his bars and projects. “If I try and define what the Lyan approach is, it’s being curious to things. We love using storytelling as a mechanism to connect more people and help them really engage in a deeper context – understanding more of those kind of nuances,” he says.
“But it’s also about the unexpected – that unobvious space, and something that feels playful, that pushes people out their comfort zone and helps people think differently. And Black Ruby was a perfect partner for this. You know, the flavours that are within it – it’s got that sweetness, a fruit forward profile. And that was exciting in terms of applying it to Scotch classics and whisky cocktails that people might know.
“But I also started to introduce new flavours – new ways to compare together – finding new applications to go: ‘how can we use this whisky as a lens to be able to explore things, like the idea of at time, looking at the seasons, looking at a sense of place. How can we use that to introduce more people to the character of whisky and make it feel super approachable? So to me, the exciting thing about these sessions is empowering a creativity for these bartenders.”
Locality and community
The Ruby Lounge sessions will take place over four dates in four different UK cities. At each, Chetiyawardana will be joined by a different local talent who will co-host the session with him.
The first session will be held in Bath on Monday 22 September at Walcot House, where he will be joined by Sean Cavanagh and former head bartender of the American Bar at The Savoy, Chelsie Bailey.
On Monday 13 October, during London Cocktail Week Monday, the London session will take place at Nightjar in Carnaby Street, co-hosted by Oscar Perry and Lyaness alumni Lele Mensah.
Moving into January 2026, the next session will take place in Manchester, co-hosted by Matt Smith and Katie Rouse, while the Scottish capital will host the Ruby Lounge during Edinburgh Bar Show in April.
Chetiyawardana shares that regional identify and community was “super crucial” to this project. “You know, it’s at the heart of hospitality,” he says, stressing the importance of the ability to bounce off each other and be inspired by each other, and use different perspectives to push the industry forwards. “That diversity is, to me, so crucial to the heart of the drinks world.”
He adds: “We’re going to four very different cities. They all have their own contexts, and different things that they’re excited by, but we want to be able to explore Black Ruby, look at the idea of flavour, creativity, storytelling and diversity of thought, and be able explore these ingredients in these conversations and use the personalities of both the co-hosts and the venues we’re in. So of course, Bath is going to feel different to Manchester or Edinburgh or London, because they are all there to reflect their own local community, and everything that it’s built around.”
Chetiyawardana explains that hosting the London session during London Cocktail Week was intentional on account of it being “such a wonderful high point of the drinks calendar”.
“There’s so much talent, innovation, and energy coming together, and it not only reflects London as the pinnacle of the food and drink scene, but it’s also the fact that you have different voices coming from across the UK, across Europe, across the world, who are all able to experience things.
“So we’ll be hosting a Ruby Lounge at Nightjar on Carnaby Street – a wonderful venue that has been doing some really innovative things for 15-plus years, and I’ll be working with Oscar and Lele to bring this guide to looking at ways in which we can talk about cocktail creation. We can look at things like food and drink pairing, and what does it mean to explore flavour in this really deep-seated way.”
Above all, Chetiyawardana says that the Ruby Lounges “should be inspiring” and “a great window into what is Black Ruby is doing at the heart of pushing whisky culture forwards and getting people thinking differently on flavour.”
Tickets for the Ruby Lounges are free of charge and bookable via Eventbrite.
Johnnie Walker Black Ruby is available from www.TheBar.com and nationwide retailers from September for RRP £39 (US$53).
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