Halewood Showcase | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 28 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/21/900

On the evening of 28th July 2021, Belfast Whiskey Week's Session 38 threw open the doors to something genuinely rare in the whiskey world: a single evening's tasting that roamed from Kentucky to Speyside, from the English Lakes to the hills of Wales, and stopped off in Ireland along the way. The Halewood Showcase was a six-dram passport for the curious, and at £35 a ticket it offered exceptional value for anyone willing to follow where the uisce beatha led.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 28th @ 21:00.

This tasting comprises of:

American Eagle 4yo Bourbon
Hawkshead English Whiskey
Crabbie Yardhead Single Malt Scotch
Sadler’s Peaky Blinder Irish Whiskey Pinot Noir Finish
Aber Inaugural Welsh Whiskey
Crabbie 12y Speyside Single Malt Scotch

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

Halewood International is not a name that always gets the reverence it deserves at a whiskey table, but the Liverpool-based drinks group has quietly assembled one of the most eclectic and ambitious portfolios in the British Isles. The BWW 2021 Showcase gave that breadth real purpose — six 50ml samples arrived together as a considered journey rather than a random selection, and the format rewarded those who slowed down and paid attention. This was exactly the kind of seanchas moment the festival was built for: a chance to sit with unfamiliar bottles and let them tell their stories.

The lineup leaned into contrast beautifully. American Eagle 4 Year Old Bourbon planted a flag in Kentucky tradition, its corn-forward sweetness and young oak warmth providing an honest benchmark before the evening moved on. Hawkshead English Whiskey — from the Hawkshead Brewery's distilling venture in the Lake District — brought a distinctly northern English character to proceedings, a reminder that England is still writing its whiskey identity in real time. The two Crabbie expressions were a study in what Speyside malt can do across different ages: the Yardhead Single Malt, accessible and lightly fruited, sat alongside the considerably more composed Crabbie 12 Year Old, which carried the kind of settled, honeyed confidence that only time in good wood can build.

For many attendees, the most conversation-worthy dram of the night was likely the Sadler's Peaky Blinder Irish Whiskey in a Pinot Noir finish. The Peaky Blinder brand carries obvious pop-culture weight, but it would be too easy to dismiss it as mere television merchandise — this was a genuine Irish whiskey made to be enjoyed, and the Pinot Noir cask gave it a berry-edged softness that played well against the natural grain character. It was exactly the sort of crossover expression that brings new drinkers to the water's edge. Those curious about how Irish whiskey expressions were explored across the week might find it worth revisiting the Sexton Deconstruction Showcase, which took a similarly inquisitive approach to a single Irish malt.

Perhaps the most quietly significant pour of the evening, though, was the Aber Inaugural Welsh Whiskey. Wales has been reasserting its whisky-making duchas — its inherited right to the craft — with genuine conviction in recent years, and an inaugural release carries the particular weight of a first word spoken. For an event like Belfast Whiskey Week, rooted in the north of Ireland but always alive to the wider Celtic whiskey world, including a Welsh expression felt right and proper. The festival's Whiskey Map charts just how richly connected these islands are through distilling tradition, and the Aber dram was a small but meaningful point on that map.

Session 38 was a reminder that a great showcase doesn't need to tell a single story — sometimes the richest evenings are the ones that celebrate the full, untidy, glorious breadth of what whiskey has become. If BWW 2021 included anchoring, deep-dive sessions like the Bushmills History MasterClass, then the Halewood Showcase offered something equally valuable: the joy of wandering. Slàinte mhath to everyone who joined us for that particular journey.