Powerscourt Introduction Tasting | 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/21/684

When Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 opened its doors — or rather, its sample packs — to the world, one of the quieter revelations of that remarkable digital festival was Session 9: an introduction to Powerscourt Distillery. For many attendees, this was a first encounter with a distillery still finding its feet on the grand Wicklow estate from which it takes its name, and the excitement of discovery was palpable from the very first pour.

About This Event

This tasting includes 3 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 28th @ 16:00.

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

Powerscourt Distillery sits on one of Ireland's most storied estates, in the shadow of the Wicklow Mountains, and even through the medium of a 50ml sample pack arriving through the letterbox, that sense of place — of tír and dúchas — came through clearly. This introductory session, held on the 28th of July 2021 at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, was pitched perfectly for those who were new to the Powerscourt name. Three carefully chosen samples gave participants a genuine foothold in understanding what this Wicklow distillery is about: a commitment to craft, to provenance, and to the slow, patient art of the uisce beatha.

The format — three 50ml drams paired with a tasting glass — was a model of accessibility. No prior expertise was required to get something meaningful from the session, and that was very much the point of an 'Introduction' tier event at BWW. Whether you were joining from Belfast or Brisbane, from Dublin or Detroit (and thanks to the festival's international depot system for 2021, many did exactly that), the experience was designed to be genuinely inclusive. There was something quietly democratic about that — whiskey as a conversation open to anyone willing to listen.

As a distillery, Powerscourt is a relative newcomer to Irish whiskey, but it carries itself with the confidence of a house that knows its land and its lineage. The estate itself has centuries of history woven through it, and the distillery's approach to whiskey-making reflects that long view — unhurried, rooted, and unafraid of ambiguity. This introductory session gave early adopters the chance to get ahead of what is shaping up to be one of the more interesting stories in modern Irish whiskey. If you want to trace the wider landscape of producers from that era, our Whiskey Map offers a useful sense of where Powerscourt sits within the broader Irish and Ulster picture.

Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 was, of course, a festival that had learned hard lessons from the pandemic years and turned them into something genuinely innovative. The hybrid model — digital tasting packs, live-streamed sessions, international depot collection — meant that Session 9 reached whiskey lovers well beyond the island of Ireland. That global reach sat comfortably alongside the festival's deep Ulster roots, much as the best seanchas travels far without losing its point of origin. For those who also wanted to explore the home-ground giants of Irish whiskey during that same festival week, sessions like Session 1's introduction to the Bushmills New Cask Finish Range or the deep dive offered by Session 83's Bushmills History MasterClass provided a rich counterpoint to Powerscourt's fresher, southerly perspective.

At £15 for three samples and a glass, Session 9 was one of the better-value entry points in the 2021 programme — and for those who left that Wednesday afternoon with a new distillery name lodged firmly in their memory, it was worth considerably more than that. Sláinte to Powerscourt, and to the spirit of curious, open-hearted discovery that made BWW 2021 what it was.