Cotswolds Showcase at Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 Review

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

Filed: 23 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/852

When Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 cast its net wide across the uisce beatha world, few sessions raised as many curious eyebrows — or as many appreciative glasses — as Session 91: the Cotswolds Showcase. English whisky at an Irish festival might sound like an unlikely pairing, but the Cotswolds Distillery has long proven that great single malt respects no border, and on the morning of 23rd July, that truth arrived in six immaculate 50ml measures.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 23rd @ 12:00.

This tasting comprises of:

Odyssey Barley (2014) - 7150 bottles, Batch 01/2018, 46%
Sherry Cask, American & Spanish Oak Hogsheads & Butts - 9900 bottles, 57.4%
Sauternes Cask "Hearts & Crafts" Series, French Oak Sauternes Wine Barriques - 2050 bottles, Batch 01/2020, 55.2%
Founder's Choice (2018) STR American Oak Red Wine Cask Single Malt 60.9%, 2800 bottles
Peated Cask, Ex-Peated Quarter Casks - 2950 bottles, Batch 01/2019, 59.3%
SMWS 146.1, 287 bottles, 4yo, ex-recharred barrique

Tasting packs will be posted out to you, but may not arrive in time for the tastings. If you wish to collect the pack in Belfast to ensure you have it in time, please contact grace@belfastwhiskeyweek.com after you order.

Looking Back

Tucked away in the rolling hills of Oxfordshire rather than the rain-lashed glens of Scotland or the drumlin country of Ulster, the Cotswolds Distillery is a relative newcomer to the world stage — founded in 2014 — yet it carries itself with the quiet confidence of a house that knows exactly what it is doing. The distillery sources its barley locally, works with traditional floor maltings, and brings a craft-forward philosophy to every cask it fills. That philosophy was on full display here, laid out across six expressions that mapped the distillery's short but richly layered history.

The tasting opened with the Odyssey Barley release from 2014 — essentially the distillery's origin story in a glass — a whisky of uncommon depth for its age, drawing on heritage barley varieties and speaking to the duchas, the sense of place and inheritance, that the best distilleries manage to bottle. From there, the Sherry Cask expression (Batch 01/2018, bottled at a robust 57.4%) brought the warmth of American and Spanish oak hogsheads and butts to bear, a richly spiced dram that needed no apology for its strength. Attendees who worked through Belfast Whiskey Week's Irish-centric programme — sessions like the Bushmills History MasterClass or the Bushmills Causeway Collection — would have arrived at Session 91 with well-calibrated palates, and the contrast with Cotswolds' distinctly English character was a genuine education.

The Sauternes Cask expression from the Hearts & Crafts series was, for many, the revelation of the morning. French oak Sauternes wine barriques lend a honeyed, almost luminous sweetness to the spirit — dried apricot, beeswax, a whisper of Botrytis — and at 55.2% it still had the backbone to carry all that softness without collapsing into confection. Limited to just 2,050 bottles, this was the kind of dram that reminds you why small-batch production matters. The Founder's Choice (2018), an STR American Oak Red Wine Cask at a punchy 60.9%, followed with more structure and grip — tannins doing honest work, dark cherry and leather threading through the sweetness.

The Peated Cask (Batch 01/2019, 59.3%) offered a glimpse of Cotswolds in a more elemental mood. Ex-peated quarter casks lend a gentle smoke rather than a full Islay broadside — complementary rather than confrontational, peat as seasoning rather than statement. And closing the set was perhaps the rarest pour of the morning: SMWS 146.1, just 287 bottles drawn from an ex-recharred barrique, bottled at four years old. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society's own selection of a Cotswolds cask spoke volumes about how seriously the wider industry has come to regard this young distillery. Those who had already explored the seanchas — the living tradition — of Irish distilling through sessions like the Sexton Deconstruction Showcase found in this finale a fascinating counterpoint: craft whisky as a living conversation across traditions, not a competition.

At £65 for six samples across such a diverse range of casks and vintages, Session 91 represented serious value for the curious and the committed alike. The logistics of a hybrid festival — sample packs posted out, with the option to collect in Belfast for those who wanted certainty — were handled with the care BWW has come to be known for. Sláinte to everyone who joined us for this corner of the Cotswolds, transported north to Belfast for one bright July morning.