Age Statement Single Malts Tasting | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 22 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/420

On a warm July evening in 2024, the John Hewitt on Donegall Street opened its doors to one of Belfast Whiskey Week's most quietly compelling sessions — a focused exploration of age statement single malts that reminded every attendee just how richly layered the story of Irish whiskey truly is. Session 32 brought together whiskies spanning decades of maturation, each one a small vessel of time, oak, and Irish character. For those lucky enough to have a dram in hand that night, it was uisce beatha at its most eloquent.

About This Event

Our second session in the John Hewitt, this time we familiarise ourselves with some age statement single malts. Irish Single Malts are a recognised globally as being great examples of Irish Whiskey, and we are blessed to have whiskies ranging from 3yrs old through to nearly 50 years old being bottled in Ireland. The John Hewitt has opened its doors to BWW 2024; just as it starts to introduce new whiskies to its loyal customers and to the tourists and visitors who frequent the busy Cathedral Quarter. We are delighted to have them on board, and hope you can support the John Hewitt on its quest to be know as one of the greatest Whiskey Pubs in Ireland.

Looking Back

There is something almost devotional about sitting with an age statement whiskey. The number on the label isn't a boast — it's a record of patience, of a distiller's trust in wood and weather and time. Session 32 leaned into that truth with care and without pretension. Guests gathered beneath the familiar, dimly lit warmth of the John Hewitt — a bar that carries its own kind of seanchas, steeped as it is in the cultural life of Belfast's Cathedral Quarter — and worked their way through a selection of Irish single malts that ranged from the bright and biscuity youth of a three-year-old expression to the deep, almost mahogany richness of whiskies approaching their fifth decade in cask.

Irish single malts occupy a genuinely special place in the global whiskey conversation, and this session made that case without needing to argue it. Nose, palate, and finish — each whiskey had its own story to tell, and the tasting format gave people the space to actually listen. The contrast between a young malt's raw fruit and cereal energy and the slow, evolved complexity of an older expression wasn't just educational; it was moving in the way that good duchas always is. These were whiskies that had waited, and you could taste the waiting.

The John Hewitt itself deserves particular mention here. This is a bar with genuine soul — a cooperative-run institution that has long championed local arts, local community, and honest hospitality. In 2024, it was beginning to build out a more serious whiskey offering for the loyal regulars and the visitors who find their way into the Cathedral Quarter from further afield. Welcoming Belfast Whiskey Week felt like a natural next step for a venue that has always understood that culture and craft belong together. If you haven't visited recently, it's well worth a return — the whiskey shelf is growing into something worth talking about. For those who want to explore the wider landscape of what's being bottled across the island, our Whiskey Map is a good place to start planning your next journey through Ireland's distilleries.

Session 32 sat comfortably within BWW 2024's broader programme of single malt exploration. Attendees who wanted to go deeper into the Irish malt tradition could look back at earlier festival sessions, including the illuminating Session 83: Bushmills History MasterClass, which traced the remarkable lineage of one of the world's oldest licensed distilleries. Those curious about expression-level detail might equally enjoy revisiting Session 50: Bushmills Causeway Collection, a deep dive into some of that distillery's most distinctive cask-finished releases. Age statements, in that broader context, aren't just numbers — they're chapters in a longer conversation.

A £15 ticket for a guided tasting of this calibre, in a venue as characterful as the John Hewitt, on a July evening in the heart of Belfast — that's not just good value, that's the spirit of Belfast Whiskey Week distilled. Sláinte to everyone who raised a glass that night, and to the John Hewitt as it writes the next chapter of its own whiskey story.