SMWS MasterClass | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 Review

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

Filed: 28 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/21/740

There are tastings, and then there are events — moments when the uisce beatha in the glass feels less like a drink and more like a dispatch from another era. Session 82 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021, led by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, was firmly the latter. Six single cask expressions, ranging from a Clynelish distilled in 1982 to a Highland Park laid down in 2008, gathered together for a MasterClass that asked its participants to sit quietly, pay attention, and let some truly extraordinary whisky do the talking.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 28th @ 19:00.

This tasting comprises of:

G14.1 Dunbarton 28yr Single Malt - 47.8% - 1/163 d.1st Oct 1986 Refill ex Bourbon Cask
55.13 Royal Brackla 8yr Single Malt - 55.1% d.Feb 1995 b.Sept 2003
51.15 Bushmills 16yr Single Malt - 56.4% - 1/220 d.22nd May 2002 1st Fill ex Bourbon Cask
36.18 Benrinnes 11yr Single Malt - 57% d.Oct 1988 b.Jun2000
4.260 Highland Park 12yr Single Malt - 61.3% - 1/258 - d.28th Jan 2008 ex Bourbon Hogshead then finished in 1st Fill ex Bourbon
26.4 Clynelish 13yr Single Malt- 64.2% d.Apr 1982 b.Sept 1995

Tasting packs will be posted out to you, but may not arrive in time for the tastings. If you wish to collect the pack in Belfast to ensure you have it in time, please contact grace@belfastwhiskeyweek.com after you order.

Looking Back

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society needs little introduction to anyone who has spent serious time in the world of single malt. Founded in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, the SMWS has spent four decades doing one thing with uncommon dedication: bottling whisky straight from the cask, undiluted and unfiltered, under a coding system that keeps the distillery identity playfully obscured until you're ready to look it up. The result is a tasting culture that prizes the liquid above the label — and Session 82 embodied that philosophy completely. Attendees weren't just being poured good whisky; they were being invited into a way of thinking about it.

The lineup assembled for this MasterClass was quietly staggering. The evening opened with G14.1, a 28-year-old Dunbarton single grain distilled on the 1st of October 1986 and bottled at 47.8% from a refill ex-bourbon cask — a reminder that grain whisky, given time and the right wood, can achieve a complexity that shames many a malt. From there, the path wound through a Royal Brackla 8yr (55.1%), a spirit of considerable coastal character, before arriving at 51.15 — a Bushmills 16yr single malt distilled in May 2002, one of just 220 casks, bottled at a robust 56.4%. For those already familiar with the Old Bushmills distillery through events like the Bushmills Core Malts Introduction or the Causeway Collection MasterClass, this SMWS expression offered a fascinatingly different lens on a distillery that rarely shows itself quite so nakedly.

The back half of the evening rose in both ABV and intensity. A Benrinnes 11yr (57%) distilled in October 1988 brought that distillery's characteristically meaty, waxed-fruit depth; Highland Park at 61.3% — drawn first from an ex-bourbon hogshead and finished in first-fill ex-bourbon — arrived with all the smoky, heathered authority you'd expect from Orkney; and the closing dram, a Clynelish 13yr distilled in April 1982 and bottled at a formidable 64.2%, was a piece of genuine seanchas in a glass. Clynelish at that age and strength is not a whisky that rushes to meet you — it rewards patience, a few drops of water, and a willingness to listen. It felt like an appropriate close to an evening built around exactly those qualities.

It's worth noting that in the particular circumstances of BWW2021, tasting packs were posted directly to participants — a practical concession to the times, and one that came with its own quiet charm. Opening a parcel of SMWS samples at your own table, arranging six little bottles before you, has something of the ritual about it; a domestic version of the duchas that a great tasting always carries. Those who wished to collect in Belfast were welcome to do so, and a number did — gathering the packs in person before settling in for what turned out to be a genuinely memorable evening. If you're curious about how the wider 2021 programme explored Irish whiskey alongside Scotch, the Bushmills History MasterClass makes for a natural companion piece.

Session 82 was the kind of event that reminds you why whisky festivals matter beyond the commerce and the spectacle. Six casks, six distilleries, six distinct moments in time — each one a small argument that patience and craft, given long enough, produce something worth gathering around. Sláinte mhaith.