Copeland Spirits at Neighbourhood Café | 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/25/996

There's something quietly radical about a distillery from Donaghadee — a small County Down harbour town best known for its lighthouse and its view of the Copeland Islands — arriving in the heart of Belfast and commanding a room with nothing more than great spirits and honest food. That's exactly what happened on the evening of 19th July 2025, when Copeland Distillery took over Neighbourhood Café for one of Belfast Whiskey Week's most distinctive Food & Whiskey Pairing events of the festival.

About This Event

Belfast Whiskey Week is Collaborating with Neighbourhood Cafe each day during the Festival. This is an unprecedented step for both BWW and Neighbourhood; with each event being completely different! Keep a lookout for our other collaborations.

Copeland Spirits: A rare opportunity to explore the various Copeland Distillery Spirits, including, whiskey, gin, rum and the coffee liquor. Couple these great spirits with a bespoke menu and coffees; you’ll be looking for Neighbourhood to keep them on their everyday menu.

Looking Back

The Neighbourhood Café takeover series was one of the boldest moves BWW 2025 made — an unprecedented daily collaboration that turned a much-loved local café into a rolling festival venue, with each night belonging to a different spirit entirely. Copeland's evening felt like a natural fit. Neighbourhood is warm, unhurried, and rooted in the community; Copeland Distillery carries those same instincts, even if its tír is the windswept coastline of County Down rather than the city streets. When the two came together, there was a shared duchas — a sense of belonging — that ran through the whole evening.

What made this event genuinely rare was its breadth. Copeland isn't just a whiskey producer, and this wasn't just a whiskey evening. Guests had the opportunity to work through the distillery's full range — whiskey, gin, rum, and their coffee liqueur — each one paired thoughtfully with a bespoke menu that Neighbourhood had developed specifically for the night. The coffee liqueur alongside Neighbourhood's own coffees was a particular talking point; the kind of combination that makes you wonder why it isn't on the menu permanently. Reportedly, more than a few attendees left the evening saying exactly that. You'd struggle to argue with them.

Copeland is a BWW regular with genuine roots in the festival — they've hosted their own Distillery Day, run intimate tasting sessions, and appeared across showcase events and expo floors over the years. But there's something different about seeing a distillery in someone else's space. Stripped of the familiar backdrop of their coastal home, Copeland's spirits had to speak for themselves, and they did so with confidence. The whiskey in particular — nuanced, with that faint coastal character you come to expect from spirits matured near the sea air of the Ards Peninsula — found a natural companion in the food Neighbourhood had assembled around it.

For those new to the distillery, the evening served as an excellent introduction — broader in scope than the more focused introductory tasting sessions that have featured in previous festival years, and all the better for it. For returning Copeland devotees, there was the quiet satisfaction of watching a brand you've followed develop its confidence in a room far from home. Sláinte to that.

At £30 a head, this was one of the better-value evenings of BWW 2025 — generous in its pours, considered in its food, and relaxed in its atmosphere. If the Neighbourhood takeover series returns in 2026, and if Copeland is among the names on that roster again, do not hesitate. Book early, bring your appetite, and let Donaghadee come to you.