Nate Shumway is curating a weekly whisky pop-up called The Olde Mouldy at The Ames Street Deli in Kendall Square. (Photo: Sam Mallikarjunan)

Even for non-drinkers, Nate Shumway’s way of describing whisky makes the stuff seem irresistible. Cracking a bottle of Corti Brother’s Exquisite Whiskey, he finds it sweet and earthy with “notes of cola – a great surprise!” Returning to two 17-year-old bourbons, he deems Jefferson’s “candied, rich, fresh” and identifies the flavors underlying Eagle Rare: “Pumpernickel and peppermint patty!”

The stuff Shumway and partner Tania Mejer drink and recommend would be a hell of introduction to whisky; this is the good stuff. But it becomes available to all starting Saturday with a weekly whisky pop-up at the Ames Street Deli in Kendall Square (or, rather, at the mezzanine-level bar above the attached restaurant, Study). He calls it The Olde Mouldy.

“[It’s] a name that’s been slowly fermenting in the back of my mind, which I wanted one day to affix to a nice rural publican under my stewardship, but who knows if that’ll ever happen,” Shumway said, “and one really hates to waste a good name.”

The pop-up has been in a soft opening for the past couple of months after some samplings for friends in Shumway and Mejer’s Cambridgeport home proved the concept. Shumway, a beer taster and buyer with Federal Wine & Spirits in Boston who has worked at Formaggio Kitchen in Huron Village, plans to keep the selections shifting from week to week from a carefully curated range of “rare and exquisite bottles,” highlighting the quality, complexity, obscurity and other details a drinker would never get on their own.

He plans to expand the Olde Mouldy website, and the Twitter feed is here.

The Olde Mouldy whisky tasting takes place from 7 to 11 p.m. Saturdays at the Ames Street Deli, 73 Ames St., Kendall Square. Prices might range from $5 to $25 per drink.