Micil Distillery Poitín Tasting – Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 24 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/596

When Micil Distillery came to Belfast Whiskey Week 2021, it didn't arrive quietly. Session 13 introduced the festival's online audience to one of Ireland's most quietly defiant spirits — poitín — poured through the lens of a Connemara family who have been keeping the flame alive since 1848. For many attendees, this was a first proper encounter with uisce beatha in its most ancient, unmediated form.

About This Event

This tasting includes 3 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 24th @ 16:00.

This tasting comprises of:

Irish Poitín - 44%
Heritage Edition Poitín - 46%
Heritage Edition Poitín - Virgin Chestnut Barrel Rested

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

There's a word in Irish — dúchas — that means something like inherited nature, the spirit of a place and people carried forward through generations. It's hard to think of a better word for what Micil Distillery represents. Founded along the lineage of Micil Mac Chearra and now in the hands of the sixth generation of the Ó Griallais family in Connemara, the distillery doesn't so much make poitín as continue it. Session 13 at BWW 2021 gave that story a proper airing, and the Belfast audience — no strangers to the romance of illicit distilling in their own hinterland — were a receptive crowd.

The tasting pack for this introductory session comprised three 50ml samples: the Irish Poitín at 44%, the Heritage Edition Poitín at 46%, and the remarkable Heritage Edition Poitín Rested in a Virgin Chestnut Barrel. Three drams, three distinct expressions of the same ancestral tradition. Moving through them in sequence was less like a conventional tasting flight and more like watching a piece of seanchas — oral history — unfold in the glass. The unaged Irish Poitín hit with the clean, raw clarity you'd expect: grain-forward, lively on the nose, with a frankness that more polished spirits rarely permit themselves. The Heritage Edition stepped that up a register in both complexity and authority.

It was the Virgin Chestnut Barrel Rested expression, though, that really held the room. Chestnut casks are a rarity in Irish distilling — a continental tradition more at home in Cognac country than Connemara — and the effect was striking. There was a softness to the texture, a gentle sweetness threaded through without obscuring the wildness at the spirit's core. Micil manages to feel simultaneously ancient and genuinely innovative, rooted in its tír yet unafraid to experiment. That tension is what makes them worth paying attention to.

The online format that defined BWW 2021 suited this kind of intimate, narrative-led tasting well. Tasting packs were posted out ahead of time — with the option to collect in Belfast for those who didn't trust the post — and while the logistics of a festival held in living rooms rather than venues brought its own challenges, there was something fitting about poitín being savoured at home. It has always been a domestic spirit, a hearth spirit. The festival's Session 13 product page captures the event details, and Micil's full range remains available to explore through their brand collection on the festival shop.

For those who came to BWW 2021 through the more established end of the Irish whiskey spectrum — the Bushmills sessions ranged from introductory tastings to deep-dive history masterclasses — Micil offered a useful and enjoyable corrective. Poitín predates the licensed distillery by centuries, and Micil's work is a reminder that Irish whiskey's story doesn't begin with a column still and a bond warehouse. Sláinte mhath to the Ó Griallais family, and to the spirit they've refused to let go quiet.