BWW 21 Bottles MasterClass Review – Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 26 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/780

Some milestones deserve more than a toast — they deserve a full reckoning. Session 90 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021, the BWW 21 Bottles MasterClass, was exactly that: a curated, celebratory deep-dive into 21 expressions that had defined the festival's vision of Irish whiskey, delivered on the 26th of July to a global audience raising their glasses in unison. Six carefully chosen 50ml samples arrived through letterboxes from Belfast to Brisbane, and the uisce beatha flowed across time zones.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 26th @ 12:00.

For those in the USA, Australia, Sweden, Europe, the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, you will be able to save on delivery costs by having your package to sent to a localised depot for collection. You will be charged a small fee upon collection, but the cost will be much cheaper than having packs delivered to individual addresses. If you would like to avail of this option, please make a note in the Special Instructions box, and we will contact you at a later date to arrange this and refund your delivery charges.

Looking Back

There is something quietly profound about a festival turning inward to reflect on its own journey. BWW 2021 arrived in the strange, still aftermath of the pandemic years, when so much of what we loved about communal whiskey culture had been pared back to the essentials — the liquid in the glass, the voice in the ear, the story behind the dram. The BWW 21 Bottles MasterClass leaned into that intimacy fully. Rather than a single distillery showcase, this session drew from the breadth of the festival itself, assembling 21 bottles that spoke to the range, ambition, and sheer quality of Irish whiskey in the early 2020s. It was seanchas in spirit — the living tradition, gathered and examined.

The format was globe-spanning in a way that would have seemed implausible just a few years earlier. Participants in the USA, Australia, Sweden, across Europe, and on both sides of the sheugh between the Republic and the North were all brought into the same conversation through the festival's thoughtful depot collection system — reducing delivery costs and friction, and ensuring that the tasting was as accessible as it was ambitious. Sixty-five pounds secured six 50ml samples and a glass: not a bad investment for what proved to be a genuine education in the range and depth of what Irish whiskey has become.

The MasterClass format suited the material perfectly. This was not an event for passive sipping — it rewarded attention, comparison, and a willingness to let one dram inform the next. Attendees who had already worked through other sessions during the week — perhaps the revelatory Session 83: Bushmills History MasterClass, or the more intimate Session 50: Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass — would have arrived at Session 90 with well-trained palates and a richer frame of reference. The arc of learning across BWW 2021 was, in this sense, cumulative: each session building vocabulary and confidence that made the next one more rewarding.

It is worth noting just how much of the festival's beating heart lay in the Bushmills orbit. Old Bushmills Distillery, the ancient guardian on the Causeway Coast, was a constant presence across BWW 2021 — from introductory sessions on its Core Malts to cask strength explorations and heritage deep-dives. That the BWW 21 Bottles session drew on this well of material, alongside the broader Irish whiskey landscape, gave it a particular sense of tír — of rootedness in place, even as it reached out across continents. Irish whiskey is never merely a product; it is always, in some sense, a geography.

Session 90 closed out that particular thread of BWW 2021 with warmth and generosity. It was the kind of event that reminded you why Belfast Whiskey Week exists: not to sell whiskey, but to share it — to bring people into the duchas of a tradition that belongs to everyone willing to listen carefully and sip slowly. Sláinte to all who raised a glass that July afternoon, wherever in the world they happened to be sitting.