Islay MasterClass – Session 68 | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 27 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/21/332

On the evening of 27th July 2021, Belfast Whiskey Week turned its gaze westward across the water to Islay — that wind-scoured, peat-black jewel of the Inner Hebrides that has bewitched whisky lovers for generations. Session 68 was a MasterClass in the truest sense: six expressions drawn from some of the island's most storied and adventurous distilleries, each one a small act of dúchas, of inherited character carried forward through smoke, sea and oak.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 27th @ 17:00.

This tasting comprises of:

Lagavulin 12yo 2020 Special Release - 56.4%
Bowmore 25yo Small Batch 43%
Bruichladdich 20yo 3rd Ed 46%
Kilchoman Port Cask
SMWS 53.321 11yo
Octomore 10.1 - 5yo - 59.8%

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

Six 50ml samples arrived — or were collected at the door for those wise enough to arrange it in advance — and with each pour came the distinct sensation of crossing a sheugh wider than geography alone might suggest. Islay whiskies occupy a world of their own, and Session 68 was constructed to honour that breadth. This wasn't a lineup built around a single house style; it was a deliberate, considered survey of what the island is capable of, from elegant age-stated malts to boundary-pushing young distillate.

The evening opened in the classical register with the Lagavulin 12yo 2020 Special Release at a robust 56.4% — a cask-strength expression that needs no introduction to any serious student of the uisce beatha. Where the standard 16yo is celebrated for its composed, aristocratic peat, the 12yo Special Release has always carried something rawer and more elemental, a reminder that smoke and iodine are not just flavour notes but a way of life on Islay's southern shore. Alongside it, the Bowmore 25yo Small Batch at 43% offered a welcome counterpoint — decades of Sherry and ex-Bourbon maturation having rounded and deepened what began as that characteristic Bowmore coastal peat into something closer to dark chocolate, dried fruit, and the faintest salt-spray memory.

The Bruichladdich 20yo 3rd Edition at 46% brought its own quiet authority. Bruichladdich is a distillery that wears its convictions on its sleeve — terroir-obsessed, unpeated at its core, deeply curious — and a 20-year-old expression represents that philosophy given patience and time. It sat beautifully in the lineup as a reminder that Islay's identity is not reducible to peat alone. Equally fascinating was the Kilchoman Port Cask, bottled through the Scotch Malt Whisky Society as SMWS 53.321 at 11 years old — a wine-influenced finish from one of Islay's youngest distilleries, still earning its place in the island's seanchas but already speaking with a confidence that belies its youth.

The finale, however, belonged to Octomore 10.1 at 59.8% — a five-year-old whisky that carries more phenol parts per million than most distilleries would dare contemplate in a lifetime. Bruichladdich's Octomore range continues to provoke and delight in equal measure, and tasting it within this lineup allowed attendees to situate its volcanic intensity within a richer conversation about what Islay peat actually means. It was a fitting crescendo: bold, unapologetic, and alive with the character of the tír that shaped it.

Session 68 stood as one of the more ambitious single-origin MasterClasses of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021, asking attendees to sit with six very different expressions of one island's soul. For those whose curiosity didn't stop at Islay, the festival offered plenty of Irish counterparts to explore — from the intimate deconstruction of Session 22's Sexton Showcase to the deep heritage dive of Session 83's Bushmills History MasterClass. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who raised a glass that July evening — whether in person, at a kitchen table in Belfast, or somewhere with a sea view that might, just about, have rivalled Islay's own.