Drams & Cheese with Redbreast | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 31 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/21/956

There are pairings that make sense on paper, and then there are pairings that make you wonder how you ever enjoyed either thing alone. Session 40 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 — Drams & Cheese — fell firmly into the second category. On the 31st of July, with tasting packs landing on doorsteps across Ireland, participants settled in with six generous 50ml samples and a carefully chosen board of cheese, ready for one of the festival's most sensory and sociable showcases of the year.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 31st @ 12:00.

Please note that this session includes Cheese which we are unable to deliver overseas so this pack is only available for delivery within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This tasting has a selection of cheeses paired with:

Dubliner Beer Cask Smoked Stout
Hinch Peated
Bushmills Rum Cask Finish
Dunville's PX 12 year old
Dunville's 3 Crowns
Redbreast 12 year old

Tasting packs will be posted out to you, but may not arrive in time for the tastings. If you wish to collect the pack in Belfast to ensure you have it in time, please contact grace@belfastwhiskeyweek.com after you order.

Looking Back

The lineup read like a love letter to the breadth and ambition of Irish whiskey in 2021. Dubliner Beer Cask Smoked Stout opened proceedings with its dark, roasted character — a whiskey that practically arrived wearing a pub apron. Hinch Peated brought a gentle smoke that felt like standing at the edge of a bog on a damp Ulster morning. Bushmills Rum Cask Finish offered warmth and tropical sweetness, a reminder that the Old Bushmills Distillery — the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world — continues to find new ways to express its centuries of craft. Dunville's PX 12 Year Old and the 3 Crowns added depth, richness, and a proud nod to Belfast's own distilling revival. And then came Redbreast 12.

If the session had a moment of collective stillness, it was here. Redbreast Irish Whiskey is the dram that turned a generation of Scotch drinkers into Irish whiskey people, and tasting it alongside a well-chosen cheese made that conversion story feel almost inevitable. Single pot still, rich with orchard fruit, toasted wood and a creamy, honeyed mid-palate — Redbreast 12 has always been the benchmark against which other Irish whiskeys quietly measure themselves. Paired with the right cheese, those qualities didn't just hold up; they expanded, softened, and sang.

The cheese element was what made Session 40 genuinely distinctive within the BWW programme. It wasn't a gimmick — food pairing at this level requires real thought, and the selections here were chosen to complement rather than compete. A harder, nuttier cheese alongside the Dunville's PX drew out dried fruit notes that might otherwise have stayed hidden. Something younger and creamier with the Redbreast created a luxurious, almost dessert-like finish. Participants who had attended other sessions — say, the deep-dive craft of the Sexton Deconstruction Showcase or the Bushmills-focused technical sessions — found this one offered something different: a reminder that whiskey, at its heart, is meant to be enjoyed, shared, and savoured at the table.

It's worth noting that the tasting packs for this session were only available for delivery within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — the cheese, perishable and proud, simply wouldn't travel overseas. That island-only boundary gave the event an unexpectedly intimate quality, a duchas of sorts: a taste of home, for those at home. Those who could collect their packs in Belfast were encouraged to do so, lending the session a small community warmth that suited its character well.

If Session 40 stayed with people, it was because it understood something important: whiskey and good food are both expressions of place, of tír, of the hands and traditions that made them. For those who want to explore more of what Redbreast brings to the festival, the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass offers another window into the richness of Ulster's whiskey heritage. But Drams & Cheese — relaxed, generous, quietly revelatory — had a magic all of its own. Sláinte.