Irish v Scottish NAS Showcase | 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
Ref: BWW/21/172

Some debates are as old as the sheugh that separates Ulster from Scotland, and few carry as much flavour as the question of Irish versus Scotch whisky. Session 44 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 — Irish v Scottish NAS — threw that ancient rivalry into sharp and delicious relief, setting six no-age-statement drams against one another in a Showcase tasting that took place on the evening of 26th July. It was, by any measure, a session with something to prove on both sides of the North Channel.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 26th @ 18:00.

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

No-age-statement whiskey has long been a talking point in the wider uisce beatha community — beloved by some for the distiller's freedom it represents, eyed with suspicion by others who like a number on the label. What Belfast Whiskey Week 2021's Session 44 did so well was reframe that conversation entirely. Instead of asking should NAS whiskeys exist, it asked something far more interesting: when you strip away the age statement, what does each tradition actually taste like? Six 50ml samples arrived — three from Ireland, three from Scotland — and the answer, it turned out, was complicated in the best possible way.

The format of a Showcase sits neatly between a casual tasting and the deeper rigour of a MasterClass, and it suited this particular face-off perfectly. Attendees were given enough structure to appreciate what was in the glass without the session tipping over into lecture territory. The conversation that accompanied the pour — whether on screen or at the table — carried the warmth of good seanchas, the kind of storytelling that makes whiskey taste better. Irish pot still richness rubbed up against Scotch malt complexity, and neither tradition emerged with a clean knockout. That, of course, was entirely the point.

What made this session particularly interesting was the way it quietly illuminated the philosophy behind NAS releases. Both Irish and Scottish distillers use the approach for different reasons — from preserving house style consistency to showcasing unexpected cask finishes — and the six expressions on the night illustrated that range admirably. For anyone curious about how the broader Irish whiskey landscape fits together, the Session 22: Sexton Deconstruction Showcase from the same festival offered a complementary deep-dive into what an individual Irish brand can achieve without the scaffold of an age statement.

It's also worth noting that BWW 2021 was still navigating the particular logistical creativity demanded by the times — sample packs were dispatched to participants across Ireland, the UK, Europe, the USA, Australia, and Sweden, with localised depot collection available to reduce costs for those further afield. That a session like this could reach a whiskey lover in Stockholm or Sydney and still feel like a Belfast event speaks to something genuine in the festival's dúchas — its sense of belonging and rootedness, carried across distance. The North Channel isn't so wide when you've got a good dram in front of you.

Session 44 was one of those events that rewarded the curious more than the already-converted. If this taste of the Irish-Scottish debate has you wanting to go deeper on either tradition, the Session 50: Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass offered a masterful look at one of Ulster's great distilleries, and the Session 83: Bushmills History MasterClass put the whole conversation in its proper historical context. Between the three, you'd have had a very fine week indeed. Sláinte.