Around the World in Eight Drams | Talk | 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: 4 min
Ref: BWW/23/444

There is a particular kind of magic that settles over a room when the familiar is set aside and the curious is invited in. On Wednesday 26th October 2023, Belfast Whiskey Week's Event 74 — Around the World in Eight Drams — did exactly that, asking a room full of whiskey lovers at Malmaison Belfast to leave their beloved Irish and Scotch at the door and follow the uisce beatha wherever it chose to flow that night. Eight countries. Eight drams. Two and a half hours of pure, wide-eyed discovery.

About This Event

Let’s relax, unwind and go on a tasting journey around the World. No Irish or Scotch in this tasting. Whiskies from 8 Countries. Let’s keep it Curious. Are you Intrigued? Where to Go? Timeslot: 9pm-12am Start Time: 9pm Duration: 2.5hrs Venue: Malmaison Drinks: 8 Drams Type: Talk 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

Malmaison Belfast is a venue that wears its character well — all dark wood, low light and a sense that the evening ahead means business. It was the right setting for an event that asked something quietly radical of its attendees: set aside the familiar, resist the pull of the home shore, and travel. No Irish. No Scotch. Just the broader, wilder world of whiskey, laid out dram by dram across a journey that spanned eight nations. The room, filling steadily from nine o'clock, had the air of people who had come prepared to be surprised.

And surprised they were. The selection — drawn from eight different countries — offered a vivid reminder that the craft of distilling grain and water and time is not the sole preserve of these islands. Japan's precision, America's boldness, the emerging voices from continents that have only lately joined the conversation — each dram arrived with its own story, its own climate, its own relationship to the land that shaped it. It is worth remembering that whiskey, at its root, is an expression of place — of tír and soil and the hands that tend the still — and this evening made that argument compellingly, even when the tír in question was very far from Ulster.

What distinguished Event 74 from a simple pour-and-taste was the quality of the journey itself. A well-guided whiskey tasting asks you to compare, to contrast, to notice — and with eight distinct national characters in the glass, there was rich material for conversation. Palates that had arrived expecting the soft fruit notes of home territory found themselves navigating peat from unexpected latitudes, spice from distant grain traditions, and sweetness earned in climates that age whiskey at a pace quite different from a Speyside warehouse or a Midleton rickhouse. The duchas of each whiskey — its inheritance, its belonging — came through in the glass in ways that no amount of description fully prepares you for.

This spirit of curiosity ran through much of the 2023 festival programme. Events like Island Whiskies: History, Heritage, Legacy and Future Collaborations explored how geography shapes whiskey identity closer to home, while On the Couch with Women Who Whiskey brought fresh perspectives on who gets to tell the whiskey story and how. Together, they spoke to a festival that has always understood that the best whiskey conversations are the ones that push a little further than you expected to go. Event 74 pushed further than most, and all the better for it.

By the time the eighth dram was done, somewhere approaching midnight, the room had the easy warmth of people who had shared something genuinely worth sharing. Not every dram will have won every heart — that is the honest nature of a tasting like this — but the collective experience of travelling the world in a single sitting, guided by knowledgeable hands and a genuine sense of adventure, was its own reward. Sláinte to that. If the global whiskey map intrigues you, our Whiskey Map is a fine place to keep exploring.