Dragon Claw Whiskey & Poker Night | 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: 4 min
Ref: BWW/25/684

Some events at Belfast Whiskey Week ask you to sit quietly and contemplate the angel's share. The Dragon Claw Whiskey & Poker Night at the Garrick Bar was emphatically not one of those events. On the evening of Saturday 19th July 2025, founder Chris Crooks brought his brand's trademark swagger — bold, fiery, and gloriously unsubtle — to one of Belfast city centre's most storied traditional bars, and the result was exactly the kind of night the uisce beatha was made for.

About This Event

Dragon Claw Whiskey makes no apologies for being direct, forward thinking, extravagant, delicious and flamboyant. This year Chris is bringing back Dragon Claw Whiskeys famous Poker night, a stable for the brand. Hosting what will be an exceptional night of Poker, Whiskies, Food and Prizes at the historic Garrick Bar.

For those new to Dragon Claw, founder and owner Chris Crooks is the owner of the World-renowned White Dragon Tattoo Studio in Belfast.

Chris has taken his childhood upbringing in the US, along with his attention to detail for Japanese Tattoos, to curating eye-catching label designs and mouth-watering whiskies. Proud to be from Northern Ireland, he has made a mark on the premium whiskey category here in Ireland and indeed around the globe. The Garrick will be an excellent venue for what is geared to be an evening that will be nothing short of entertaining, tasteful and full of whiskey to boot!

Plenty of drams, great food, poker, craic and prizes.

Looking Back

Dragon Claw is a County Down whiskey brand that selects, finishes, and bottles with a fierce point of view, and Chris Crooks has never pretended otherwise. A Belfast tattoo artist of international renown — his White Dragon studio is genuinely world-famous in the craft — Chris brings the same philosophy to whiskey that he brings to ink: precision, personality, and zero interest in the anonymous. The labels alone stop you in your tracks. The whisky inside tends to finish the job. Walking into the Garrick Bar that Saturday evening, you understood immediately that this wasn't going to be a night of hushed reverence. The room had an energy to it, the kind that builds when people who love a good dram also happen to love a good hand of cards.

The Garrick itself is the right kind of Belfast institution — heavy wood, whiskey knowledge behind the bar, and a warmth that doesn't need to try. It suits Dragon Claw well, a pairing of old Belfast bones and new Belfast ambition. Guests settled into their seats, drams were poured, and the poker began in earnest. Chris hosted with the ease of someone entirely in his element, and the prizes kept the stakes real. Food arrived to steady everyone's nerves — or at least provide a socially acceptable reason to pause between rounds. This was the duchas of a good Belfast night out: nothing forced, everything earned.

What makes the Dragon Claw Poker Night a returning fixture of Belfast Whiskey Week — this was the brand's second successive year hosting the format, following on from last year's iteration at BWW2024 — is the way it makes whiskey genuinely social. There's no performance of connoisseurship here, no pressure to identify the precise county of origin from a single sniff. You drink good whiskey, you play cards, you talk nonsense and occasionally make smart decisions, and somewhere along the way you realise you've learned something about the liquid in your glass without anyone lecturing you. That's a rare and valuable thing.

Dragon Claw's presence at BWW2025 extended well beyond a single night. The brand is becoming one of the festival's most recognisable characters, turning up across formats and leaving its mark each time. If you're curious about what else was on offer during the week, events like Pop & Toast: Art Exhibition and Fine Whiskey Tasting showed just how broad the festival's vision has become, or for something with a very different competitive energy, WHISK(E)Y WARS: Tragedy. Treachery. The Perfect Single Malt. delivered its own kind of drama across town. BWW2025 was, in short, a week that held multitudes.

The £80 ticket bought you a full evening: whiskey, food, poker, prizes, and the particular satisfaction of spending a Saturday night doing exactly the right thing in exactly the right place. Chris Crooks has built something genuinely worth paying attention to in Dragon Claw, and nights like this are why. Sláinte to the whole table — and better luck next year to everyone who folded too early.