Powers Irish Whiskey History Session | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 24 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/156

There are evenings at Belfast Whiskey Week that feel less like tastings and more like sitting down with a great seanchaí — someone who carries the living memory of a craft in their hands. The IDL Powers History session, held on 24th July 2024 in the Music Hall at The Deer's Head, was very much one of those nights. Carol Quinn, Archivist and Information Management Specialist with Irish Distillers Ltd, returned to Belfast to guide a rapt room through the long and storied past of Powers Irish Whiskey, glass in hand and archive in mind.

About This Event

We are proud to welcome, back to Belfast; Carol Quinn, Archivist and Information Management Specialist with Irish Distillers Ltd. As head of archives an Ireland's largest whiskey distillery, Carol has, at her disposal, a vast amount of information. Carol loves to share the information she is preserving, and will lead us through a very interesting history of Power Irish Whiskey. Come and learn from one of the most influential women in the Irish Whiskey Industry, while sipping through the history of Powers with a few whiskies. Music Hall at the Deer's Head

Looking Back

The Deer's Head is one of those Belfast rooms that earns its atmosphere honestly. Rooted in the city's Music Quarter, it carries the particular warmth of a venue that has heard a thousand conversations worth having — and on this July evening, it added one more to its tally. Attendees settled into the Music Hall with anticipation, and Carol Quinn wasted no time in earning it. As the custodian of Ireland's largest whiskey distillery archive, she brought with her not just facts and dates but the duchas of a tradition stretching back to John Power & Son's establishment on John's Lane in Dublin in 1791.

What made this session genuinely special was Carol's ability to hold the room between the scholarly and the personal. She spoke about Powers with the authority of someone who has spent years in the company of ledgers, correspondence, and artefacts that most of us will never see — and yet nothing felt dusty or remote. The story of Powers is a story of Irish resilience: a distillery that survived temperance movements, wars, partition, and the long contraction of the Irish whiskey industry, to emerge as one of the most beloved names in the uisce beatha canon. Carol gave that arc its proper weight.

The whiskeys themselves kept pace with the narrative. Attendees sipped through a curated selection that illustrated the evolution of the Powers character — that distinctive spicy, full-grain style that has always set it apart from its peers. Each pour arrived with context: this is how it was made, this is who drank it, this is what it meant. For those who have joined us at similar deep-dive sessions — such as the Session 83: Bushmills History MasterClass — the format will have felt familiar, but the flavour and the story were entirely their own.

Carol Quinn has rightly been described as one of the most influential women in the Irish whiskey industry, and spending an evening in her company made it easy to understand why. Her work as an archivist is not mere preservation — it is an act of cultural stewardship, ensuring that the seanchas of Irish distilling is not lost to the hurry of modern commerce. The questions from the floor were lively, and Carol met each one with the kind of generosity that makes you realise the archive is not just a repository but a conversation she genuinely wants to keep going.

At £15, this was one of the better-value evenings BWW 2024 had to offer — an education, a tasting, and a genuinely good night out, all folded into one. If you're curious about exploring the wider landscape of Irish and Ulster whiskey heritage, our Whiskey Map is a good place to continue the journey. And if the IDL world has caught your interest, it's worth looking back at Session 22: Sexton Deconstruction from a previous festival year, which offered a complementary angle on another Irish Distillers gem. Sláinte mhaith to Carol, to Powers, and to everyone who made it through the door on the night.