Golf, Food & Whiskey Pairings | Fine Dining | Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/25/764

There are certain moments during Belfast Whiskey Week when the stars align — when the city's wider story and the festival's own duchas find each other in something genuinely special. Event 23, To Play Golf: You Need Grass, Clubs, Balls & Whiskey, was one of those moments. Timed to coincide with the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush, this fine dining tasting brought together bespoke whiskey pairings and a three-course menu inside one of Belfast's most celebrated restaurants, WaterMan House — an evening that was, in every sense, well above par.

About This Event

With the 153rd Open at Royal Port Rush taking place this weekend, we thought we’d have a little bit of fun with some of our Whiskey Tastings. Keep an eye out for these very special tastings that bring you championship style whiskey experiences.

This Fine Dining experience is well above Par and provides a delicate tasting of exclusive whiskies and imaginative plates; all focused on the golf course.

Be prepared to experience one of Belfast’s most celebrated restaurants, with a bespoke 3 Course Meal, paired with selected whiskies that perfectly compliment the Chef’s work.

Looking Back

The 153rd Open at Royal Portrush cast a long, golden shadow over Belfast in July 2025, and Belfast Whiskey Week was never going to let that pass without raising a glass. Event 23 was one of a handful of specially commissioned Open-themed tastings woven through the festival programme — experiences designed to capture the spirit of championship week while doing what BWW does best: finding the intersection between exceptional whiskey and exceptional hospitality. The result was an evening that felt unhurried and considered, the kind of night that earns its place in the seanchas of a festival still writing its own story.

WaterMan House provided the setting, and it wore the occasion well. The restaurant brings a quietly confident approach to its craft — the sort of place where the food is taken seriously without the room feeling stiff. For this dinner, the kitchen turned its attention to the golf course as a culinary landscape: dishes rooted in terrain, in season, in the particular character of links country. Plates arrived with a sense of intention, each one acting as a frame for the whiskies chosen to sit alongside them rather than compete with them. Whether it was something coastal and saline finding its echo in an aged single malt, or a richer, oakier dram anchoring a more substantial course, the pairings had clearly been thought through with care.

At £60 a head, this was among the more considered investments in the BWW 2025 programme — but it was the kind of evening that justifies the outlay in the first place sip. The whiskey selection skewed exclusive, in keeping with the event's commissioned status, and there was a pleasing sense of discovery alongside the pleasure of confirmation: drams that rewarded attention, that opened up across the course of a meal rather than demanding to be assessed in isolation. For those who wanted to continue exploring the festival's wider range of specialist experiences, events like the Tasmanian Whiskey Dinner and EDO X BWW: Exclusive Bottlings offered their own distinct pleasures in a similar spirit of deep engagement.

What lingered longest, beyond the flavours themselves, was the particular pleasure of good timing. The Open comes to Portrush rarely enough that its arrival still feels like an event in itself — a gathering of the wider world around a narrow strip of Antrim coastline that the locals have always known is something extraordinary. To mark that with an evening of uisce beatha and fine food, in a city that has learned to wear its confidence with grace, felt entirely right. Sláinte to WaterMan House, to the chefs, and to every guest who pulled up a chair.

If this kind of curated pairing experience speaks to you, it's worth keeping an eye on what else the BWW programme has to offer across its run. The Method & Madness tasting brought a very different energy to the week — playful, boundary-pushing, and well worth a look for anyone who wants their whiskey with a side of the unexpected. The full BWW Whiskey Map is the best place to start planning your own route through everything the festival has on offer.