Cask Strength Irish Whiskey MasterClass | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

Name: Belfast Whiskey Week 2026
Start: 2026-07-24
End: 2026-08-01
Location: Belfast

Filed: 26 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/21/796

On the afternoon of 26th July 2021, a very particular kind of quiet descended on whiskey lovers across the world as they settled in with six generously poured 50ml samples and prepared to go deep. Session 67 — the Cask Strength Irish Whiskey MasterClass — was one of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021's most forensic and rewarding experiences, a proper education in uisce beatha at its most undiluted and unapologetic. With Redbreast Irish Whiskey anchoring the lineup alongside some extraordinary independent and rare bottlings, this was a session that asked attendees to pay attention — and richly rewarded those who did.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 26th @ 13:30.

This tasting comprises of:

Writer Tears 2017 - 1/5280 - 53%
Cadenhead's "An Irish" 11 year old
Redbreast 10 year old
Mizen Head 14 year old Bodega Sherry - 56%
The Nose Art - #3673 1/225 - 50.7% d.Nov 2001 b.Feb 2018
Connemara Cask Strength

For those in the USA, Australia, Sweden, Europe, the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, you will be able to save on delivery costs by having your package to sent to a localised depot for collection. You will be charged a small fee upon collection, but the cost will be much cheaper than having packs delivered to individual addresses. If you would like to avail of this option, please make a note in the Special Instructions box, and we will contact you at a later date to arrange this and refund your delivery charges.

Looking Back

Six whiskies. No water added. No apologies made. The lineup for Session 67 read like a wishlist scrawled on the back of a Béal Feirste bar mat: Writer Tears 2017 (one of just 1,280 bottles, bottled at a bold 53%), Cadenhead's "An Irish" 11 Year Old, the Redbreast 10 Year Old Mizen Head 14 Year Old Bodega Sherry at 56%, the extraordinary single cask Nose Art #3673 (1 of 225, distilled November 2001 and bottled February 2018 at 50.7%), and the ever-reliable Connemara Cask Strength to close. It was a broad sweep of Irish whiskey's landscape — from the peated west of Connemara to the sherry-soaked complexity of a pot still classic — and every dram had something distinct to say.

The Redbreast expression in this lineup was a particular talking point. Redbreast is the dram that turned a generation of Scotch drinkers into Irish whiskey people, and its single pot still character — all orchard fruit, toasted wood, and that distinctive spiced creaminess — stands as a benchmark against which so much else is measured. Here, the Mizen Head 14 Year Old Bodega Sherry bottling arrived in cask strength form, stripped of the veil that dilution lends, and gave attendees a chance to meet the whiskey in its most direct and honest state. It was exactly the kind of encounter this masterclass was built for. Redbreast has been one of BWW's most steadfast and versatile presences over the years, appearing across showcase sessions, sensory experiences, and more — and you can explore the full range through their collection on our site.

The inclusion of the Nose Art #3673 — a sixteen-year-old whiskey quietly waiting in a single cask since November 2001, released in a run of just 225 bottles — gave the session a real note of seanchas, of whiskey as a thing with history and story. These are the bottlings that remind you why cask strength matters: every idiosyncrasy, every year of quiet transformation in wood, arrives intact in the glass. There was something humbling about tasting it alongside whiskies that, in their own ways, are also making history in real time.

Those who joined from further afield — and BWW 2021, conducted in the particular way of a festival year shaped by circumstance, drew participants from the USA, Australia, Sweden, and across Europe and Ireland — received their tasting packs through the festival's carefully coordinated depot system, a practical arrangement that meant the drams arrived in good order wherever in the world the attendee happened to be sitting. It was a reminder that the duchas of this island's whiskey tradition travels well. If you're curious about where Irish whiskey is made and how it moves through the world, our Whiskey Map is a fine place to start that particular journey.

Session 67 stood as one of the intellectual and sensory high points of BWW 2021. A masterclass in the truest sense — not in the diluted, overused way that word has come to mean a nice chat, but in the older sense: a gathering of genuinely curious people around genuinely exceptional whiskies, guided with expertise and allowed to draw their own conclusions. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who raised a cask strength dram that afternoon.