Rain, Revelation & The Relics of Antrim: A Bushmills Evening at The Waratah.

It was a rain-slicked Sydney night, the kind that hushes the city’s edges and paints everything in reflections - puddles that looked like spilled ink, gutters that sang old Irish laments. On Liverpool Street, under the soft tremble of awnings and umbrellas, a quiet procession filed into The Waratah. Not just for dinner. For pilgrimage.

What lay ahead wasn’t a tasting in the conventional sense, but something far closer to séance - a summoning of history, geology, alchemy, and grain. At its centre: Bushmills, the world’s oldest licensed distillery. And in place of mere sommeliers or bartenders, we had guides: Scott Allan from The Whisky List, articulate and composed like a trusted archivist of spirit; and Loy Catada, an evangelist of elixirs whose enthusiasm fizzed with every pour. Together, they framed the evening not as performance, but devotion.

Bushmills 10 Year Old: A Prelude in Green

The overture arrived gently - Bushmills 10, fresh and agile, not unlike a poem scrawled on windblown parchment. Matured in bourbon and Oloroso sherry casks, it opened with orchard fruits - green apple skin, underripe pear, lemon zest - before settling into warm barley, spearmint, and a faint echo of vanilla fudge. It had the gait of early morning - dew-slicked and full of light.

Paired with lemon aspen tartlets, shiitake parfait and fermented plum, this first course was an ode to bush and bog, umami and uplift. And then, the "Heritage Spritz" - a cocktail woven with lemon myrtle and kombu, carrots and red sake. It tasted like someone had distilled springtime rain and laced it with folklore.

Dipti Karnad’s beet-cured kingfish followed: vivid pink, citrus bright. If the 10 was morning, this was sunrise sliced and plated.

Bushmills 16 Year Old: The Storyteller's Flame

A turn in mood, a descent into depth. Bushmills 16, matured in bourbon, sherry, and port casks, was a polyphonic whiskey - fig jam and black cherry on the nose, then dark chocolate, walnut oil, and a wisp of pipe tobacco. Port influence played the velvet undertone; sherry added rustle and rhythm. It was as though a cello had learned to speak Gaelic.

Tom Opie’s “Artist’s Special” was a playful foil: Wagyu fat-washed whiskey, bunya miso, muntrie amazake. Strawberries and smoked coffee danced over bitter orange like cabaret in a cathedral.

Then came the Black Opal Wagyu - crusted in pepperberry, napped in ooray plum jus, and flanked by a lemon myrtle potato pavé that felt like edible geometry. A dish with gravitas - a main act in velvet gloves.

Bushmills 21 Year Old: The Philosopher's Reserve

The 21 arrived like a secret decoded only after dusk. Madeira-cask finished, this was Bushmills at its most meditative. The nose offered beeswax and clove, sultanas soaked in Oloroso, and hints of old furniture polish - in the best possible sense. On the tongue: maple-glazed walnuts, black tea, crème anglaise, and a tension between raisin sweetness and tannic grip that resolved like a chamber quartet’s final chord.

Loy Catada, almost hushed now, likened it to “reading an old novel in a quiet room,” and there was truth in that - it had dust, depth, and a kind of candlelit stillness.

Opie’s “Black Manhattan” riff added texture - olive caramel, chamomile, Nonino, and quince, constructing a drink that wore its cynicism like a tailored coat.

Then: a 70% chocolate mousse with macadamia and dulce de leche, where the whisky’s heat played foil to the dessert’s sighing richness. Sophisticated without swagger.

Bushmills 26 Year Old Crystal Malt: The Oracle’s Whisper

And then - the relic.

Bushmills 26, born of crystal malt and rare in every sense. This was less a drink, more a visitation - a whispered sermon in spirit form, drawn from a distillery older than the piano sonata, older than the United States. Released as part of the distillery’s exquisite Causeway Collection, the 26 Year Old is crafted from crystal malt - a unique roasted malt more often found in the making of ales than single malts. It lends a sumptuous, biscuity sweetness and a layered depth that dances on the edge of indulgence, yet holds itself with aristocratic restraint.

On the nose, it unfurled with a precise and painterly grace: white peach and honeysuckle, as if spring had been aged in oak; salted caramel and the comforting, nostalgic note of Werther’s Originals unwrapped in a grandmother’s kitchen. Then - a saline breeze of sea spray, a nod to the North Atlantic’s stern presence just beyond the distillery walls.

The palate was a study in architectural balance. First, a crisp upper tier of toasted brioche, its buttery crust yielding to silken crumb. Then a midsection of butterscotch and roasted pineapple, evoking the char and tang of open-fire cookery. Underneath, a gentle undertow of pink peppercorn - warming, aromatic, with a sly nod to spice markets and alchemy. The texture was oil-rich yet ethereal, the mouthfeel akin to silk soaked in sunlight.

Each sip was less a repetition than a revelation - a whisky in five acts, contained in a single glass. It didn't just evolve, it deepened. Like reading Joyce with every light on, or listening to Satie while it rains: patient, elusive, utterly absorbing.

This was not merely Bushmills matured, but Bushmills transfigured - a rare expression of time, technique, and terroir in perfect tension. If the 10-year was dawn and the 16-year twilight, the 26-year was eclipse - not the absence of light, but its redirection through shadow and history.

Scott Allan, reverent now, offered little beyond a pause. “You don’t taste this. You commune with it.” He was right. No cocktail, no garnish. Just silence - and the scent of rain not subisiding hammering down on The Waratah's tin roof.

Epilogue in Grey

When the final dram was drained, the room while enthused sat in an almost liturgical quiet. It was still raining. Of course it was. Nights like these require rain - to soften the edges, to stitch the seams of old stories whispered in malt and smoke.

As we stepped back into the puddled streetlight, Bushmills no longer felt like a brand. It felt like myth. Bottled and unbottled. Told and retold. A distillery of time, spoken through four exquisite expression and one unforgettable, rain-drenched night.

---

Words by AW.

Photo by AW.