Copeland Distillery Introduction Tasting – 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/21/548

There's something quietly radical about a distillery that looks out across the water towards the Copeland Islands and decides, yes, this is where Irish whiskey belongs. Session 66 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 brought that spirit into homes across the world on the evening of 26th July, as Copeland Distillery led an introductory tasting that felt as grounded in the County Down tir as the shoreline at Donaghadee itself.

About This Event

This tasting includes 3 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 26th @ 19:30.

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

For a whiskey festival built on the duchas — the deep, inherited sense of belonging to a place — few sessions in BWW 2021 carried quite the local resonance of this one. Copeland Distillery is named after the islands visible from the County Down coast, and that geography isn't just branding. It's a statement of intent: that Northern Ireland has its own whiskey story to tell, one that doesn't begin and end in Bushmills or Dublin, but stretches along every sheugh and headland of this island. This introductory session was an invitation to hear that story told properly.

Three 50ml samples made their way to participants across Northern Ireland, the Republic, Europe, the USA, Australia, and Sweden — a logistical feat that reflected how genuinely global the appetite for Belfast Whiskey Week had become by 2021. The festival had moved, by necessity, into a hybrid and postal format, but evenings like this one proved that shared discovery doesn't require a shared room. When the drams were poured at 19:30, there was a collective sense of occasion that geography couldn't dilute. Sláinte meant the same thing whether you were raising a glass in Belfast or Brisbane.

As an introductory session, this was designed for the curious as much as the converted — a warm welcome to a brand whose ambitions are as clear as the view from Donaghadee on a fine evening. Copeland Distillery presents itself without pretension, and that honesty came through in the session's tone. There was no mystification, no gatekeeping. Just good whiskey, well explained, with the seanchas of the place woven naturally through the conversation. For those coming to the brand for the first time, it was exactly the kind of beginning that makes you want to know more.

It's worth noting that Copeland is very much part of the Belfast Whiskey Week family in the fullest sense. Over the years, they've brought their craft to Distillery Days, Neighbourhood Café Takeovers, and intimate gathering events — always with the same unpretentious enthusiasm that made Session 66 so enjoyable. If this introduction left you wanting to go deeper into the world of Irish whiskey from the north, sessions like the Bushmills History MasterClass or the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass offered their own rich threads to follow that same week.

Session 66 was, in its modest way, a small act of homecoming — a reminder that the uisce beatha of County Down has every right to stand in its own light. You can explore more of what Copeland Distillery has to offer, or consult our Whiskey Map to see where they sit in the broader landscape of Irish and Northern Irish whiskey. The islands are still out there. The whiskey is still worth finding.