Speyside MasterClass Session 69 | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 26 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/21/100

If there is a corner of Scotland's whisky map that carries the weight of legend most gracefully, it is Speyside — and on the evening of 26th July 2021, Belfast Whiskey Week turned its full attention there. Session 69 was a MasterClass in the truest sense: six extraordinary drams, each chosen to illuminate the character, range, and quiet ambition of a region that has shaped uisce beatha as we know it.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples & Glass and will take place on the 26th @ 19:30.

Mortlach 2013 - Speyside Festival Bottling
Cadenhead's Craigellachie 12yo
SMWS 7.238 Longmorn 26yo - 1/209 - 50.9% - d.4th May 1993 Refill ex Bourbon Hogshead
Cadenhead's Glendullan 20yo
Secret speyside 26yo
A SMWS bottling

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

Six 50ml samples arrived in tasting packs that felt, when lifted from the box, like something worth sitting down for slowly. The lineup read like a love letter to Speyside's depth and diversity: a Mortlach 2013 Speyside Festival Bottling to open the conversation; a Cadenhead's Craigellachie 12 year old that brought the kind of direct, unvarnished character Craigellachie does so well; and a SMWS 7.238, one of the Society's characteristically cryptic but rewarding selections. Between them, these three whiskies alone could have sustained a full evening's discussion.

But the session didn't rest there. A Longmorn 26 year old — distilled on the 4th of May 1993, drawn from a refill ex-bourbon hogshead at 50.9%, one of just 209 bottles — was the kind of whisky that reminds you why aged Speyside single malts attract such devoted followings. Longmorn is not always the loudest name in the room, but in a glass it speaks with a quiet authority that earns its place at any serious table. Beside it, a Cadenhead's Glendullan 20 year old offered something more robust and considered, while a secret Speyside 26 year old SMWS bottling wrapped the evening in a pleasant air of mystery — the sort of dram where the guessing is half the pleasure.

That the session was held online during a period when gathering in person remained complicated made the care taken over the tasting packs all the more meaningful. Attendees were encouraged to collect their samples in Belfast if timing was uncertain — a small logistical grace note that spoke to the festival's Belfast roots and its genuine concern for the experience rather than just the transaction. For those who joined from further afield, the packs that arrived through the post carried something of the duchas of the festival itself: a sense of place, of welcome, of occasion made portable.

As MasterClasses go, this one rewarded concentration. Speyside's reputation rests on elegance and complexity rather than drama, and Session 69 made the case for that patiently and persuasively across six distinct expressions. Attendees who had also joined the Bushmills History MasterClass earlier in the week would have arrived here with their palates already well-exercised and their appreciation for whisky's layers sharpened. And for anyone who had been following the broader Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass, the shift from Irish to Scots expression was an instructive one — different traditions, different terroir, but the same underlying respect for time and wood and water.

Session 69 was exactly what a festival MasterClass should be: not a performance, but a conversation. It left attendees with a richer understanding of Speyside's range and, in all likelihood, a renewed curiosity about what lies at the back of a warehouse after two or three decades of patient waiting. You can explore more of what Belfast Whiskey Week has brought together over the years on our Whiskey Map, or browse the full festival collection to see where the journey might take you next. Sláinte.