4 Provinces Irish Whiskey Tasting | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

Some events at Belfast Whiskey Week ask straightforward questions — which cask, which age, which distillery. Session 35 in July 2024 asked something altogether more searching: why here, why Belfast, and what does it mean to hold a festival celebrating Irish whiskey in the north of this island? The answer came not in words, but in glass after glass of premium uisce beatha drawn from all four provinces of Ireland, poured in one of the most remarkable rooms ever given over to the spirit.

About This Event

Trying Irish Whiskey from the four provinces of Ireland. A unique tasting exploring premium whiskies that have emerged across Ireland so we can taste the regional difference. We also get the opportunity to spend time in the World's most extravagant and opulent room dedicated to Irish Whiskey while tasting whiskies that let us reflect and question the reason why we have a festival here in Belfast at all....

Looking Back

The premise was deceptively simple. Ireland has four provinces — Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connacht — and the island's whiskey landscape has, in recent years, begun to reflect that geography in ways that would have seemed impossible a generation ago. This tasting set out to chart that flowering, moving through premium expressions that speak of their tír, their place, with real character and ambition. For guests willing to pay £45 and give their full attention, it was a masterclass in how far Irish whiskey has travelled.

The setting mattered enormously. The Friend at Hand is not a neutral backdrop; it is, by any honest measure, one of the most opulent rooms in the world dedicated to Irish whiskey — a place where the shelves, the light, and the sheer density of bottles create something approaching the sacred. To sit in that room and taste your way across the island's provinces was to understand, at a sensory level, what the duchas of Irish whiskey actually means: an inheritance, a belonging, a continuity of craft that transcends county lines and political borders. The room does not let you forget where you are, and it does not let you forget what you are drinking.

The tasting itself drew naturally on the festival's long relationship with the distilleries of Ulster. Belfast Whiskey Week has always been proudly rooted in this corner of the island, and events like the Bushmills History MasterClass and the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass have done much to root that northern seanchas — that living knowledge — in the festival's identity. Session 35 took that foundation and asked attendees to look south and west, to hold Ulster's tradition alongside what Munster, Leinster, and Connacht are now producing, and to find not rivalry but conversation between them.

What emerged was a tasting full of genuine surprise. Regional difference in Irish whiskey is not always obvious — the shared triple-distillation heritage, the familiar orchard-fruit warmth — but push into premium expressions and the distinctions sharpen. Atlantic influences, different grain bills, independent maturation choices, and the particular mineral character of different water sources all left their marks on the whiskies in the glass. This was Irish whiskey not as a monolith but as a archipelago of flavour, each province contributing something distinct to the wider story. For those who had also attended the Sexton Deconstruction Showcase, there was particular pleasure in tracing those threads further afield.

The question the event's description posed — why do we have a festival here in Belfast at all? — is one the festival has never been afraid to sit with. The answer Session 35 offered was quietly powerful: because Belfast sits at a crossroads, because Ulster's distilling history is ancient and alive, and because a city that has learned, sometimes painfully, the value of shared ground is well placed to host a celebration that gathers the whole island's craft under one roof. Sláinte to everyone who raised a glass that evening. It was a session worth every penny of the asking price.

More from Belfast Whiskey Week

• Session 83: Bushmills History (MasterClass)
• Session 1: Bushmills New Cask Finish Range (Introduction)
• Session 2: Bushmills Core Malts (Introduction)
• Session 22: Sexton Deconstruction (Showcase)
• Session 23: Bushmills Cask strength (Mini-MasterClass)
• Session 50: Bushmills Causeway Collection (MasterClass)

Explore the full programme on the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map.