Glendalough Cocktail Masterclass | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 21 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/508

On the 21st of July 2024, the bar at Angel & 2 Bibles became something of a classroom — though not one any of us would have recognised from school. Session 26 of Belfast Whiskey Week brought together the venue's expert mixologists and the bright, botanically-driven character of Glendalough whiskey for a hands-on cocktail masterclass that left attendees shaken, stirred, and more than a little delighted. At £30 a head, it was one of the festival's most sociable and genuinely fun ways to get close to the uisce beatha.

About This Event

The fantastic mixologists at Angel & 2 Bibles are here to deliver a hands on Cocktail Making MasterClass where you will get to make and drink 3 Whiskey Cocktails using whiskies from Glendalough. Test yourself, bring some friends, show-off and have some fun while learning a wee bit about Cocktail construction and Whiskey production.

Looking Back

There's a particular kind of learning that only happens when your hands are busy and your glass is full. Session 26 understood that instinctively. The mixologists at Angel & 2 Bibles — a bar that wears its personality with real confidence, all dark wood and considered quirkiness — guided participants through the construction of three whiskey cocktails, each built around expressions from Glendalough Distillery. These weren't passive demonstrations. Attendees were at the bar, measuring, muddling, and mixing alongside the professionals, with the inevitable spillage and laughter that makes for the best kind of evening.

Glendalough, nestled in the Wicklow Mountains, brings a distinctly Irish wildness to its whiskey — seasonal botanicals, foraged ingredients, a real sense of dúchas in the bottle. That character gave the cocktail format real substance. Rather than masking the whiskey, the recipes were built to frame it — to let the distillery's personality come through the ice and the citrus and the bitters. Attendees left not just knowing how to make a better drink, but understanding a little more about why Glendalough's whiskey behaves the way it does in the glass.

The event sat comfortably within a BWW 2024 programme rich in hands-on and educational experiences. Those who found themselves wanting more structured whiskey knowledge after this session might have pointed their compass toward events like the Bushmills History MasterClass, which offered a deeper dive into the seanchas of Irish distilling, or the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass for those keen to explore cask influence and complexity with similar rigour. Belfast Whiskey Week has always believed the best way to understand whiskey is to engage with it — and Session 26 made that case as compellingly as any tasting.

What struck observers most about the evening was the social energy in the room. Friends brought friends, strangers became collaborators over shared muddlers, and the competitive edge of the 'show-off' spirit the session description cheekily promised was very much present. A cocktail masterclass can easily feel like a performance by the expert and an audience by everyone else — this one avoided that entirely. The team at Angel & 2 Bibles created something genuinely participatory, which is harder than it looks and rarer than it should be.

If this session sparked a curiosity about the broader landscape of Irish whiskey, our Whiskey Map is a fine place to start tracing the geography of the island's distilling revival — from the Wicklow glens where Glendalough draws its water to the midlands traditions carried by producers like Lough Ree Distillery, whose own appearances at Belfast Whiskey Week have quietly become a highlight for those paying attention. Sláinte mhath to everyone who mixed, sipped, and made a bit of a mess in the best possible way.