Private Tasting PDH: ABL – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 23 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 2 min
Ref: BWW/24/164

Some drams are poured for the crowd, and some are poured for the few. The PDH: ABL Private Tasting at Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 fell firmly into the latter category — a closed-door, invitation-only session that sat apart from the festival's public programme by both design and spirit. What happened inside those walls remains, as it should, a matter of confidence — but the fact that it happened at all speaks to the depth and ambition that has come to define BWW as a festival.

About This Event

Private Event

Looking Back

Belfast Whiskey Week has always made room for the extraordinary alongside the accessible. While the bulk of BWW2024's programme was rightly devoted to bringing the uisce beatha to as wide an audience as possible — through masterclasses, showcases, and introductory sessions — events like the PDH: ABL Private Tasting exist in a different register entirely. These are the gatherings where the whiskey conversation deepens, where trust is the entry ticket and discretion the dress code.

Private tastings of this kind carry their own seanchas — a living tradition of shared knowledge passed between people in rooms not open to the public gaze. The intimate format allowed for the kind of unhurried, unscripted dialogue that larger sessions, however excellent, simply cannot replicate. For those fortunate enough to attend, this was less a ticketed event than a moment held apart from ordinary time.

The wider BWW2024 programme gave ample context for the calibre of whiskey thinking on display across the festival. Old Bushmills Distillery — Ireland's oldest licensed distillery and a producer whose relationship with the north Antrim coast is woven into the very dúchas of this place — featured prominently across the public schedule, from the deeply researched Bushmills History MasterClass to the technically focused Bushmills Cask Strength Mini-MasterClass. The Sexton Single Malt also had its moment in the light with a dedicated Sexton Deconstruction Showcase that drew considerable praise from attendees. The private tasting, in that context, felt like the quiet room at the end of a long and rewarding corridor.

There is something fitting about a festival rooted in Belfast — a city that has never lacked for strong opinion or sharp wit — carving out space for events that resist easy description. The PDH: ABL Private Tasting will not be remembered through tasting notes published online or photographs shared to the world. It will be remembered, as the best evenings always are, in conversation — in the particular way a glass caught the light, and the company that surrounded it. Sláinte mhaith.