Powers Single Casks 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/21/396

On the evening of 28th July 2021, Belfast Whiskey Week's Session 46 brought whiskey lovers around the world face-to-face with one of Irish whiskey's most storied names: Powers. This was no gentle introduction — it was a full MasterClass, six single cask expressions lined up and ready to speak for themselves, delivered to doorsteps as far afield as Australia and the United States.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 28th @ 22:00.

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

There is something quietly fitting about Powers finding its way to the heart of Belfast Whiskey Week. The brand carries a duchas — an inherited belonging — to the Irish whiskey tradition that few others can claim with the same weight. Founded in Dublin in 1791, Powers is among the oldest names in the uisce beatha canon, and its single cask releases are where that heritage meets genuine ambition. For Session 46, the festival gathered that ambition into a package of six 50ml samples, each one a distinct conversation between wood, time, and spirit.

Six drams is not a casual evening. It is a commitment, and the MasterClass format honoured that. Attendees weren't simply tasting; they were being guided through the granular detail of single cask whiskey — the way one barrel can diverge so completely from another, the influence of warehouse position, fill strength, and the slow alchemy of maturation. For those new to the concept of single casks, it was an education that no textbook could quite replicate. For the seasoned enthusiast, it was the kind of evening you find yourself still talking about days later, trying to recall which dram hit you hardest and why.

One of the defining qualities of BWW 2021 was its remarkable reach. Rather than allow geography to gate-keep the craic, the festival had engineered a logistics model that made it possible for participants across Ireland, Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and Australia to receive their sample packs. Localised depot collection points kept costs sensible, and the result was a genuinely global gathering — people pulling the same cork at the same hour across a dozen time zones. If you want to explore the breadth of what the festival covers, the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map gives a sense of just how wide the Irish whiskey world stretches.

Session 46 sat comfortably among a strong lineup of Irish whiskey deep-dives that ran throughout BWW 2021. Those with a taste for cask-led exploration would have found plenty of company in events like the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass, which similarly asked attendees to sit with whiskeys shaped by specific wood decisions, or indeed the Bushmills Cask Strength Mini-MasterClass, which offered its own lessons in how proof and maturation interact. Powers and Bushmills are very different animals — one a Dublin pot still institution, the other the ancient single malt from the north coast — but both sessions shared a commitment to whiskey as something worth understanding, not just consuming.

At £120 for six samples and a glass, Session 46 asked attendees to invest, and the format delivered value in the truest sense: not just quantity of spirit, but quality of experience. Sláinte to everyone who raised a glass that night in July, wherever in the world they were sitting. Powers gave them something worth the effort, and Belfast Whiskey Week gave them the context to appreciate it properly.