Wine & Whiskey MasterClass – Hinch Distillery | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 29 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/21/260

Some evenings at Belfast Whiskey Week linger in the memory long after the last glass is set down, and Session 55 — the Wine & Whiskey MasterClass held on the 29th of July 2021 — was very much one of those. Eight carefully curated pairings of whisky, whiskey, and wine drew together traditions from Campbeltown to County Down, from Islay to the vineyards of Bordeaux, into a single unhurried evening of discovery. With Hinch Distillery among the whiskey makers represented, Northern Ireland held its own in distinguished company.

About This Event

This tasting includes 8 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 29th @ 18:00.

Whisky: Hazelburn 9yo Barolo
Wine: Ascheri - Barolo 2017 - 14.5%
Whisky: Bunnahabain 11yo - 2008 Manzanilla Cask Matured - 52.3% - warehouse No.9 d.02/07/2008 b.May 2020
Wine: De La Pastora - Manzanilla Pasada en Rama - Bodegas Barbadillo - 15%
Whiskey: Hinch 18yo Château de La Ligne Grande Réserve Finish
Wine: Château de La Ligne 2018 Grande Réserve Merlot-Cabernet - 14.5%
Whiskey: Greenspot - Léoville Barton - 46%
Wine: Château Léoville Barton - Saint-Julien 2007 - 13%

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

The premise was deceptively simple: take four whiskies (or whiskeys, depending on which side of the sheugh you're pouring from) and match each one to a wine that shared either its cask heritage, its flavour character, or both. In practice, what unfolded was something closer to a masterclass in the uisce beatha's extraordinary capacity for transformation — the way a spirit can absorb, remember, and ultimately speak the language of whatever wood it has rested in. Attendees who joined online in the summer of 2021 arrived, in many cases, with their tasting packs already to hand, eight 50ml samples alongside a proper glass, and a sense that the evening was going to ask something of them.

The session opened with Hazelburn 9yo alongside an Ascheri Barolo 2017, a pairing that set the tone with quiet authority. Hazelburn — Springbank's unpeated triple-distilled expression — is a gentle, approachable Campbeltown malt, and set beside a structured Nebbiolo from Piedmont, the shared earthiness and dried-fruit depth between the two became unmistakable. From there, the evening pivoted dramatically with Bunnahabain's 11-year-old Manzanilla Cask expression, distilled in 2008 and bottled in May 2020 from Warehouse No. 9 at 52.3%. Paired with De La Pastora's Manzanilla Pasada en Rama from Bodegas Barbadillo, this was perhaps the session's most intellectually satisfying pairing — a whisky that had spent over a decade absorbing the briny, flor-touched character of sherry casks, placed alongside the very wine that had lived in those casks before it. The connection was not merely conceptual; it was visceral.

Hinch Distillery brought its 18-year-old expression finished in Château de La Ligne Grande Réserve casks, paired with the 2018 Merlot-Cabernet from that same château. Hinch sits on a County Down estate and has established itself as one of the North's major modern whiskey operations — a producer that takes its wood programme seriously and has the patience to see it through. The Château de La Ligne finish added layers of dark berry and soft tannin to a whiskey already carrying considerable age and depth, and tasted alongside the wine itself, it was easy to trace that lineage directly. For those in the room — or rather, those tuned in from sitting rooms across Ireland and beyond — this pairing offered a quiet moment of local pride alongside international ambition.

The session closed with Green Spot Léoville Barton, matured in casks from the legendary Saint-Julien estate and poured alongside a 2007 Château Léoville Barton. Green Spot is a whiskey with its own strong duchas — a long Mitchell & Son heritage rooted in Dublin's wine trade — and so this final pairing felt not just like a flavour exercise but a kind of homecoming. The wine, by 2021 already fourteen years old and showing beautifully, matched the whiskey's restrained elegance almost measure for measure. It was a fittingly thoughtful conclusion to an evening that had consistently rewarded attention.

Session 55 was one of several MasterClass events at BWW 2021 that pushed beyond the familiar and asked participants to think about whiskey in relation to something else — in this case, the grape. If you found yourself drawn to that spirit of exploration, the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass offered another deep dive in a very different direction, while the Sexton Deconstruction Showcase brought a different kind of analytical rigour to an Irish single malt. Belfast Whiskey Week has always believed that the best way to understand the uisce beatha is to place it in conversation — with history, with place, with the people who make it, and, on an evening like this one, with the finest wines Europe has to offer.