Redbreast Showcase – Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 Review

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
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/164

If there is one dram that carries the quiet authority of a master storyteller, it is Redbreast. On the evening of 27th July 2021, Session 31 of Belfast Whiskey Week gathered whiskey lovers from Belfast to Brisbane and Boston for a Showcase tasting built around six beautifully measured measures of Ireland's most beloved single pot still. It was, by any reckoning, a night worth remembering.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 27th @ 18:00.

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

There is a phrase in Irish — duchas — that speaks to the innate character of a place and its people, something inherited rather than acquired. Redbreast Irish Whiskey carries that quality in every glass. Born from the Midleton distillery's single pot still tradition, it is a whiskey that does not need to announce itself. By the time Session 31 got underway at six o'clock on a Tuesday evening in late July, attendees across multiple continents already had their six 50ml samples lined up and ready. That global reach — with depot collection options available across the USA, Australia, Sweden, Europe, and both parts of Ireland — spoke to something important: Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 had become a genuinely international gathering, even while remaining rooted in its tír.

The Showcase format suited Redbreast perfectly. Unlike a structured masterclass with its whiteboard chronology, a Showcase trusts the whiskey to do the talking, with expert guidance threading between the pours rather than leading them. Attendees moved through the range — six expressions, each one a distinct argument for why Redbreast sits apart in the Irish whiskey canon. The pot still spice that defines the style was present throughout: that distinctive green orchard fruit, the honeyed richness, the slow creep of warming oak. For those encountering Redbreast for the first time, the evening was a revelation. For those who already counted it among their favourites, it was the pleasure of confirmation.

Redbreast is, as anyone familiar with its reputation will know, the dram that turned a generation of Scotch drinkers into Irish whiskey people. That conversion story played out quietly in living rooms and home offices across the world that July evening, glasses raised in front of screens, a shared sláinte crossing time zones. The seanchas — the oral tradition, the passing on of knowledge — is alive and well when whiskey brings people together like this, even at a digital remove. BWW 2021 understood that distance need not mean disconnection, and Session 31 was proof of it.

It would be remiss not to note the company Redbreast kept across the broader festival programme that year. The week was rich with Irish whiskey exploration — from deep historical dives to cask-strength adventures — and Session 22's Sexton Deconstruction Showcase offered an interesting counterpoint for those keen to map the wider single malt tradition. Meanwhile, those drawn to the native Ulster character of the festival found plenty to admire in the Bushmills Causeway Collection Masterclass, a session that brought the drama of the north Antrim coast into every pour. Together, these events painted a picture of an Irish whiskey landscape in confident, full flower.

Session 31 cost £45 and delivered six samples, an expert-led tasting, and — if the post-event conversation was anything to go by — more than a few converts to the pot still cause. That is the particular gift of a well-chosen Showcase: it does not merely inform, it persuades by pleasure. Redbreast, as ever, needed very little help with that part.