Japanese vs Taiwanese Whisky MasterClass | 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
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/476

On the 28th of July 2021, Belfast Whiskey Week turned its gaze far beyond the sheugh and the sea, east across continents to two of the whisky world's most compelling traditions. Session 64 — Japanese v Taiwanese — brought together six exceptional drams from Nikka and Kavalan in a MasterClass format that set the bar for the entire festival. It was a rare invitation to sit with uisce beatha made in radically different climates, shaped by radically different philosophies, and appreciate what each had to say for itself.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 28th @ 13:00.

This tasting comprises of:

Nikka Black 50
Nikka Yoichi 10yo
Nikka Taketsuru 17yo
Kavalan Solist Vinho Barrique Cask
Kavalan Solist Brandy Cask
Kavalan Solist Amontillado Cask

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

There is something quietly audacious about placing a bottle of Nikka Black 50 beside a Kavalan Solist finished in Amontillado cask, and asking a room — or in 2021's spirit, a screen — to simply pay attention. That was the quiet confidence at the heart of Session 64. No showmanship needed. The whisky did the talking. Attendees who managed to collect their tasting packs in Belfast in time had six 50ml samples lined up before them, a proper glass in hand, and two of the world's great distilling nations to explore at leisure.

The Nikka flight moved with the kind of disciplined restraint the brand is celebrated for. Nikka remains one of Japan's most storied producers, its soul rooted in founder Masataka Taketsuru's apprenticeship in Scotland — a duchas built from borrowed tradition and made entirely its own. The Black 50 opened proceedings with an accessible, approachable warmth before the Yoichi 10 Year Old shifted register entirely: peated, coastal, almost defiant in its Scottishness. The Taketsuru 17 Year Old was the quiet revelation of the flight — a blended malt of rare elegance, layered with dried fruit and oak, the kind of whisky that makes you set down your glass and think for a moment before going back for more.

Kavalan then arrived from Taiwan like a change in weather. The Solist range represents the distillery at its most expressive — single cask, undiluted, shaped by Taiwan's fierce subtropical heat which accelerates maturation in ways that defy conventional expectation. The Vinho Barrique Cask brought a lush, almost vinous richness; the Brandy Cask brought depth and confection; and the Amontillado Cask was perhaps the session's most intriguing pour — sherry-influenced but drier, nuttier, with a salinity that felt both foreign and oddly familiar to anyone who drinks Speyside. Kavalan is now one of the most decorated distilleries on the planet, and the Solist range is exactly why.

What Session 64 offered that a standard tasting rarely can was genuine seanchas — the story behind the story. Why does Japanese whisky taste the way it does? What does altitude, typhoon season, and subtropical heat do to a barrel? These are not abstract questions when the answers are sitting in front of you in a lined row of 50ml samples. The MasterClass format gave space for those questions to breathe, for comparison to do its instructive work, and for attendees to arrive at their own conclusions.

If Session 64 lit your curiosity about the wider world of whisky, Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 offered plenty of routes closer to home too — from the deep heritage explored in Session 83: Bushmills History to the single-minded focus of Session 23: Bushmills Cask Strength. And for those who want to trace the full geography of the whisky world, our Whiskey Map is as good a place to start as any. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who raised a glass East and West on that July afternoon.