Spot Whiskies Wine Pairing Masterclass | Belfast Whiskey Week 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/23/108

There are evenings at Belfast Whiskey Week that linger long after the last glass is set down, and the Wine & Whiskey Pairing: Spot Whiskies masterclass on Saturday 22nd October 2023 was firmly one of them. Held at the handsome surrounds of The Regency on Upper Crescent, this late-night session brought together the storied Spot Whiskeys range and the wines that shaped them — three Green Spot expressions, three remarkable wineries, and one room full of people genuinely paying attention.

About This Event

This is genuinely a Wine and Whiskey Pairing; 3 Spot Irish Whiskies, with their Respective Wines used in the finishing and maturation of their spirits. We are humbled to have Gerard Garland, Manager – The B.E.A.T at Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard, come to Belfast to host our Annual Wine and Whiskey Pairing. We collaborate with the Northern Ireland Wine & Spirit Institute to deliver a balanced tasting where we aim to share the links between the Wine & Whiskey Industry. This year we have set aside the 3 wine finished Green Spot Whiskies and searched for the Wines that reflect those used in cask maturation for this series; Chateau Montelena Winery in the Napa Valley, Château Léoville Barton in Saint-Julien in Bordeaux and Quail’s Gate Winery in Canada. Tonight’s tasting will be sumptuous and intriguing with a grazing table to help us into the evening.

Timeslot: 9pm-12am

Start Time: 9pm

Duration: 2.5hrs

Venue: The Regency / Upper Crescent

Drinks: 6 Drinks

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 Spot family carries a duchas — a heritage — that most whiskey ranges can only aspire to. Born from the bonded merchant tradition of Mitchell & Son in Dublin and distilled at Midleton, Green Spot, Yellow Spot, Red Spot, and Blue Spot represent one of Irish whiskey's most quietly distinguished lineages. What makes the Spot series particularly suited to an event like this is the wine cask finishing that runs through so much of the range's DNA. These are whiskies that have already had a conversation with the vine before they ever reach your glass. The 2023 BWW wine pairing was, in that sense, the continuation of a dialogue already well underway.

At the helm was Gerard Garland, Manager of The B.E.A.T at Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard — a man who brings both technical authority and genuine warmth to his hosting. Garland guided the room through three wine-finished Green Spot expressions alongside the actual wines that informed those casks: Chateau Montelena from the Napa Valley, Château Léoville Barton from Saint-Julien in Bordeaux, and Quail's Gate Winery from Canada. The Northern Ireland Wine & Spirit Institute lent their expertise to the collaboration, ensuring the wine side of the equation was held to the same rigorous, curious standard as the uisce beatha itself. This wasn't window dressing — it was genuine cross-disciplinary tasting.

What became apparent fairly quickly was how differently a whiskey reads when you've just tasted the wine that seasoned its cask. The Léoville Barton, with its Bordeaux structure and dark fruit gravitas, reframed the Green Spot expression it accompanied — suddenly the whiskey's texture, that particular weight on the mid-palate, made a different kind of sense. The Chateau Montelena brought Napa's sunshine and richness into the room, and the Canadian expression from Quail's Gate offered something altogether more unexpected: a cooler, fruitier register that lit up the corresponding whiskey from a fresh angle. Sláinte indeed to the team for sourcing wines of this calibre rather than reaching for easy approximations.

The grazing table throughout the evening was a wise and generous touch — something to anchor the palate between pours and give the room permission to breathe, to talk, to linger over what they'd just tasted. Events like this one sit at a different pace from the wider festival programme. Where sessions like the On the Couch with Micky Plummer tasting whiskies over 25 years old invite a kind of reverent, almost archaeological attention to aged spirits, the wine pairing asked attendees to hold two traditions in mind simultaneously — to think about terroir and tir in the same long thought. And for those who also caught Dunville's Core Range Exploration elsewhere in the programme, the contrast in distilling philosophies made for rich festival-wide conversation.

Running from 9pm to midnight, this was never going to be a casual drop-in. The commitment of a full evening, a £60 ticket, and six carefully chosen drinks asked something of its attendees — and they gave it willingly. The Regency, with its Upper Crescent elegance, held the room well. By the end of the night, the seanchas of the Spot family felt a little richer, a little better understood, and the links between the wine and whiskey worlds — always there, if you know where to look — had been drawn with unusual clarity. That's what the best masterclasses do. This was one of them.