Mackmyra Introduction Tasting | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 23 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/668

On the afternoon of 23rd July 2021, Belfast Whiskey Week turned its gaze north and east — past Scotland, past the familiar Atlantic horizons — and settled on something altogether unexpected: Sweden. Session 15 brought Mackmyra to the festival in introductory form, offering attendees three generous 50ml samples and a glass with which to make their first proper acquaintance with Scandinavia's most celebrated whisky producer. It was, for many, a genuinely eye-opening hour.

About This Event

This tasting includes 3 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 23rd @ 14:00.

This tasting comprises of:

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

There's a word in Irish — dúchas — that speaks to a sense of place, of belonging, of something rooted deep in the land beneath your feet. It's a concept most naturally applied to the uisce beatha of Ireland or the single malts of Scotland, spirits shaped by their tír, their territory. What made this session so quietly compelling was discovering that Mackmyra — founded in 1999 in Gävle and now one of Europe's most inventive distilleries — carries its own version of that same quality. Swedish whisky doesn't imitate its neighbours. It grows from its own soil, its own forests, its own winters.

The three expressions in this introductory flight were well chosen to illustrate exactly that point. Svensk Rök brought peat to the glass, but it was Swedish peat — juniper-kissed, resinous, softer in its smoke than an Islay malt, with a green woodland quality that felt genuinely distinctive. Amerikansk Ek leaned into American oak maturation with an approachable warmth: vanilla, light toffee, a gentle sweetness that made it an easy entry point for those less accustomed to exploring beyond the familiar. And Svensk Ek — perhaps the most characterful of the trio — used Swedish oak casks to produce something drier, more spiced, and more resinous, a dram that felt like it truly could only have come from that particular corner of the world. The Brukswhisky, Mackmyra's everyday expression, rounded the session out with an honest, unpretentious charm.

Delivered as a festival-in-a-box experience — samples arriving at your door or collected from a localised depot for those joining from Sweden, Ireland, the USA, Australia, or further afield — Session 15 captured something that BWW 2021 did particularly well: making the world feel smaller without flattening its differences. Participants were encouraged to pour, nose, and taste in their own time during the guided session, the format lending itself to genuine reflection rather than hurried consumption. Slàinte was raised in living rooms from Belfast to Stockholm.

It's worth noting that this was an introduction — the starting point of a conversation rather than its conclusion. BWW 2021 offered a rich programme for those drawn to Irish expressions closer to home, including deep dives into the Bushmills canon. If Mackmyra sparked a curiosity about what lies beyond the familiar, sessions like the Session 2: Bushmills Core Malts Introduction offered a grounding in the Irish tradition, while the Session 83: Bushmills History MasterClass traced the seanchas — the old lore — of Ireland's oldest licensed distillery. The breadth of the programme was, as ever, part of the point.

Session 15 was priced at £15 — a modest ask for a genuine passport stamp. Mackmyra remains one of the most thoughtful and confident producers operating outside the traditional whisky nations, and this introductory tasting did real justice to that reputation. If you've never poured a Swedish whisky and found yourself wondering how a birch forest might taste in a glass, consider this a prompt. You can explore the full range of BWW events and expressions over on our Whiskey Map, or browse the complete Belfast Whiskey Week collection to plan your next dram.