Hinch Distillery: Youthful & Aged Food Pairing | Belfast Whiskey Week 2023

On a Wednesday evening in late October 2023, Hearth in East Belfast became a quiet temple to the uisce beatha — and Hinch Distillery was the presiding spirit. As part of Belfast Whiskey Week 2023, the County Down distillery invited guests into a two-hour food pairing session that set the vibrancy of young malts against the deep, considered character of whiskeys still finding their voice in the warehouse. It was, in every sense, a conversation across time.

About This Event

Looking Back

Hinch sits on a County Down estate that carries a genuine sense of dúchas — that untranslatable belonging to a place — and that rootedness travelled up the road with them to Hearth. The East Belfast bar is a fitting host: unpretentious, warm, the kind of room where good whiskey makes sense at any hour. From seven o'clock, the evening unfolded at a pace that let people actually taste and think, rather than rush through a checklist of drams.

Five pours anchored the night, and the structure was quietly clever. The young malts came first, full of energy and green-edged promise — the sort of whiskeys that remind you distilling is an act of faith as much as craft. Hinch's newer expressions carry a brightness that other, older operations can only recall from memory. Then, with the food doing its work between pours, came the older casks: slower, deeper, laying out their seanchas in layers. Attendees who came expecting simply a pleasant tasting left having witnessed something closer to a distillery's autobiography read aloud.

The food pairing format — increasingly a highlight of the BWW calendar, as anyone who attended the Morning Star's Nose to Tail Bespoke Lunch or the Tribal Burger Limavady session would confirm — does something that stand-alone tastings rarely manage: it slows the room down. When there's something on a plate demanding your attention alongside a glass, you stop performing appreciation and start actually feeling it. Hinch benefited from that dynamic. The matched bites drew out textures in the whiskeys that might otherwise have slipped past unnoticed.

What made this event a standout among BWW 2023's food pairing offerings was the conceptual honesty of the premise. Youth and age aren't opposites in whiskey — they're the same spirit at different points on the road. Hinch, as one of Northern Ireland's major modern whiskey operations, is itself at an interesting juncture: established enough to have genuine aged stock, young enough to still carry the ambition and restlessness of a new-make spirit. That tension was never stated explicitly on the night, but it was present in every pour. You can explore their full range in the Hinch collection here.

By nine o'clock, when the room began to thin out into the East Belfast night, there was a particular quality to the conversation — the unhurried, slightly reflective kind that good whiskey and good food reliably produce. Slàinte to Hinch for bringing both the craft and the story, and to Hearth for holding the space with characteristic ease. If you're curious about where Hinch sits in the broader landscape of Irish and Northern Irish distilling, the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map is a fine place to start.

The Brand: Hinch Distillery

One of Northern Ireland's major modern whiskey operations, with a County Down estate and serious visitor experience.

The Venue

Hinch Distillery — Distillery. Ballynahinch, County Down

Modern distillery combining traditional Irish whiskey making with innovative techniques.

More from Belfast Whiskey Week

• 3: Morning Star: "Nose to Tail" Bespoke Lunch
• 19: Morning Star: "Nose to Tail" Bespoke Lunch
• 31: Morning Star: "Nose to Tail" Bespoke Lunch
• 37: Tribal Burger: Jameson (Meat the Family)
• 48: Tribal Burger: Dublin Liberties Distillery
• 59: Tribal Burger: Pleased to Meat Limavady

Explore the full programme on the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map.

Event Gallery