Cocktail Making with Echlinville Distillery | Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/25/804

On a Tuesday afternoon in July, the Library Bar at The Watson became a very enjoyable classroom indeed. Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 welcomed Echlinville Distillery into this elegant cocktail lounge for a hands-on masterclass that asked one simple question: what happens when some of Northern Ireland's finest spirits meet genuinely skilled mixologists and a roomful of curious, willing participants? The answer, as it turned out, was rather delicious.

About This Event

New to Belfast Whiskey Week; we welcome the Library Bar, Cocktail Lounge at the Watson to deliver, what will surely be one of the tastiest Cocktail Masterclasses this year. We are challenging the staff, at the Library Bar to deliver a unique cocktail master class for you with the use of Echlinville Whiskey, Vodka and Gin.

You’ll get to make the cocktails, after our well versed and experienced mixologists walk you through the step by step process of making bespoke Cocktails designed for the festival. Enjoy every stir, shake and sip.

This Session will use 1 Whiskey, 1 Gin and 1 Vodka from the Echlinville Distillery range.

Looking Back

Echlinville holds a particular place in the story of Northern Irish distilling. When the Ards Peninsula distillery was granted its licence, it became the first new distillery to open in Northern Ireland in more than 125 years — a milestone that carries real weight, the kind of duchas that you feel in a dram rather than simply read about. That rootedness in tir, in place, in the barley grown on the estate itself, gives Echlinville's spirits a character that's hard to manufacture and impossible to fake. Bringing those spirits into a cocktail context was always going to be interesting.

The Library Bar's mixologists were clearly well prepared. This was no off-the-shelf masterclass — the cocktails had been designed specifically for the festival, built around Echlinville's whiskey, gin, and vodka, and the step-by-step guidance walked attendees through the process with the kind of patience and good humour that makes the difference between a masterclass and a masterclass you'd actually recommend to a friend. Every stir, every shake, every measure had a reason behind it, and the team took time to explain not just the how but the why.

What made the session sing was the range of spirits in play. Using one whiskey, one gin, and one vodka from the Echlinville range meant the evening covered real ground — guests got a sense of the distillery's full character rather than a single snapshot. Echlinville is a distillery well worth knowing in the round, and an afternoon like this, hands dirty and glass full, is one of the better ways to get acquainted. The £25 ticket price felt more than fair once the cocktails started appearing.

It's worth noting that cocktail masterclasses have become something of a Belfast Whiskey Week tradition in their own right. Alongside sessions like Cocktail Making with Hinch Distillery, they represent one of the festival's most accessible and genuinely enjoyable formats — welcoming to newcomers who might find a straight tasting a little intimidating, but rewarding enough in depth and flavour to satisfy the seasoned enthusiast. Echlinville's session sat comfortably at the better end of that spectrum.

Sláinte to the Library Bar team, to Echlinville, and to everyone who pulled up a stool and got shaking. For a first outing of this particular pairing at Belfast Whiskey Week, it left a very strong impression — and if the festival comes calling again, we'd wager the answer will be a prompt yes.