Midleton Single Casks MasterClass | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 27 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/21/860

There are masterclasses, and then there are moments that remind you why you fell in love with uisce beatha in the first place. Session 54 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 — a deep-dive into Midleton Single Casks — was very much the latter. On the afternoon of 27th July, whiskey lovers near and far settled in with six carefully measured 50ml samples and prepared to be schooled by one of Ireland's most storied distilleries.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 27th @ 14:00.

For those in the USA, Australia, Sweden, Europe, the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, you will be able to save on delivery costs by having your package to sent to a localised depot for collection. You will be charged a small fee upon collection, but the cost will be much cheaper than having packs delivered to individual addresses. If you would like to avail of this option, please make a note in the Special Instructions box, and we will contact you at a later date to arrange this and refund your delivery charges.

Looking Back

Midleton Very Rare needs little introduction on this island. Every year since 1984, the arrival of the annual vintage has served as a kind of seasonal marker for the Irish whiskey calendar — a moment of collective anticipation among enthusiasts from Donegal to Dublin, and well beyond. But if the yearly bottling is the public face of Midleton's craft, then the single cask programme is where you find the distillery speaking in its most candid, unguarded voice. Session 54 gave attendees rare access to exactly that.

Six single casks, six 50ml samples, and the kind of guided conversation that only a properly structured masterclass can deliver. Each whiskey arrived with its own character, shaped by the particular wood it had rested in, the years it had spent quietly doing its work in the East Cork air, and the judgement of the team who decided — this one, now, is ready. There was a tangible sense of duchas about the whole affair: a connection to place, to tradition, to the accumulated knowledge of generations of distillers working the same ground.

What made this session particularly striking was the format itself. Rather than a broad sweep across a portfolio, attendees were invited to sit with each cask on its own terms — to notice how two whiskeys from the same distillery, perhaps the same still and the same grain, could diverge so dramatically given different wood, different time, different fortune. It was the kind of seanchas you rarely get outside a distillery warehouse: stories told through glass rather than words, though the guided tasting notes gave those stories a welcome narrative backbone.

Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 offered no shortage of serious Irish whiskey education across its sessions. Those who were drawn to the island's other great distilling tradition could explore the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass or venture into the history of Bushmills — both rich sessions in their own right. But Session 54 occupied a distinct space: there is something about Midleton's single cask releases that sits at the very apex of what Irish whiskey can achieve, and this masterclass made no attempt to understate that fact.

For those who joined from the USA, Australia, Sweden, or elsewhere across Europe, the session represented something especially meaningful — a direct line to the craft of East Cork, delivered through a carefully packed parcel and a shared occasion that transcended geography. The festival's localised depot scheme for international attendees helped make that possible without punishing anyone for living on the far side of the sheugh. At £120, it was not a casual commitment, but for what was poured and discussed across those hours, it was an afternoon that more than earned its keep. Sláinte mhaith.