On the Couch with Micky Plummer: Aged Whiskey Masterclass | BWW 2023

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2023
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 5 min
Ref: BWW/23/444

Some events at Belfast Whiskey Week are about discovery. This one — the third instalment in the On the Couch series — was about something richer: the quiet, almost devotional act of opening bottles that most collectors would rather leave sealed on a shelf. On a Friday night in November 2023, Micky Plummer settled into The Regency on Upper Crescent and did exactly that, pouring whiskies of 25 years and older to a room of people who understood precisely how rare the moment was.

About This Event

With the Striking Recency on Upper Crescent, we have designed an Elegant Series of Bespoke Collaborations with Belfast’s most Desirable of Residences. We want you to Savour Expensive Whiskies, Meet New Faces and Experience the Attention to Detail and Opulence as well as the Excellent Customer Care that the team at the Regency has to offer. In This Session (3 of 6), On the Sofa with…”Micky Plummer” (25yr Old Whiskies), we open up expensive, and not so expensive, rare, and not so rare, whiskies that need to be tasted – why? Because they are that good, they need not stay in a bottle, and live on a shelf! Because if you are going to ponder the age old question about Age Statement Whiskies and that they taste better than new expressions, then this is your chance. Because you don’t want to pay hundreds of pounds each time you want to try something new. Because we love opening up bottles of whiskey and giving the collectors a headache! Expect to have great craic with Micky while he feels like a God getting to crack open whiskies that he dreams about on a daily basis. Let this intimate tasting of whiskies, most of which will cost you a few bob in the speciality whiskey bars, transcend you to a place where you feel happy, relaxed and indulgent. We have some exceptional drams and bespoke cocktails for you to sip, accompanied with local produce; while you get comfy and discover the taste of big whiskies with big birthdays and big price tags. Timeslot: 9pm-12am Start Time: 9pm Duration: 2.5hrs Venue: The Regency Drinks: 6 Drams Type: Masterclass Disclaimers Please note that individual dietary requirements are not being catered for with any food at this event. Each Brand/Distillery and Collaborative Partner have agreed to our Min/Max Pour Policy. Please Respect this, and enjoy your festival responsibly. Festival Participants who are deemed to be too inebriated, or are not respecting themselves, will not be permitted into events and venues. ALL Hosts/Ushers/Collaborators and Venue Staff have the right to refuse participants without question and recourse. Please Drink Responsibly. All events are only available to those 18 years old and over. Do not purchase tickets if you are under the age of 18. Be prepared to produce ID if required. Venue staff & ushers may ask you to provide ID when showing your valid tickets. You may be refused enter to events if you can’t prove your age. Some venues may change, if they do, you will be notified. All events are subject to changes out of the control of the festival organisers. Any issues, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. NO Refunds will be given. Please only buy tickets if you are prepared to attend the event. Tickets are transferable. If you are going to transfer tickets please email, marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com

Looking Back

The Regency provided the perfect setting for an evening like this. Tucked on Upper Crescent, it carries the kind of unhurried elegance that feels genuinely earned rather than performed — the sort of place where a long-aged dram feels entirely at home. Guests arrived at nine to find an atmosphere already warm, the room dressed with the understated attention to detail that has made The Regency one of the city's most coveted collaborative venues for the festival. This was not a conference hall tasting. This felt, as it was designed to, like being invited into someone's well-appointed front room.

Micky Plummer is one of those hosts who brings a particular kind of energy to a glass: irreverent enough to keep the evening light, knowledgeable enough to make every pour meaningful. He made no secret of the fact that cracking into bottles of this age and calibre gave him something close to religious satisfaction — and that enthusiasm was entirely contagious. Six drams were poured across the two-and-a-half hours, each one carrying the weight of decades and the stories that come with them. Some carried considerable price tags in the specialist bars; here, they were simply passed around and talked about honestly. That generosity of spirit is at the heart of what the On the Couch series has always been about.

The whiskies themselves ranged across the kind of spectrum that keeps collectors and drinkers alike arguing pleasurably into the small hours — the central question of whether age really tells in the glass given an honest and unhurried examination. The answer, as it so often is when the bottles are this good, was complicated and delicious. Accompanying local produce and bespoke cocktails were woven throughout the session, grounding the evening in something recognisably and warmly Belfast, even as the drams themselves carried the duchas of distilleries far afield.

If the On the Couch format appealed to you, it was worth knowing that the series ran across six sessions that week — Leo Phelan took the pre-1980s canon apart with characteristic rigour, while Marty McAuley brought his own perspective to the same pre-1980s territory in a later session. Micky himself returned for a second late-night couch session, proof that demand for this kind of intimate, unpretentious access to serious whiskey was not going anywhere.

At £150 a ticket, this was never intended to be an everyday event — but for those who were there, settled in among new faces, local produce on the table and a truly exceptional dram in hand, it felt like entirely fair value for an evening that existed, as the best ones do, somewhere between education, indulgence, and the simple, ancient pleasure of good uisce beatha shared in good company. Sláinte mhaith.