Tasmanian Whiskies Session 2 | Transportation & Belgrove | BWW 2025

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/25/068

On a bright July Sunday in 2025, a room full of curious palates gathered in the Duke of York on Belfast's famous Commercial Court for one of the most warmly anticipated straight whiskey tastings of Belfast Whiskey Week — a return to the southern hemisphere's finest island. Session 2 of the Tasmanian Whiskies programme brought together Killara, Hillwood, Transportation, and the inimitable Belgrove, along with the man behind those last stills himself: Peter Bignell. For fifteen pounds, it was, as promised, hard to beat for value anywhere on this island.

About This Event

We welcome back our friends from the Island off the Island of Australia; Tasmania.

Killara, Transportation, Hillwood and of course the famous Belgrove.

Come meet Peter Bignell as he imparts vast amounts of craic and knowledge straight from the stills. You’ll be blown away by the passion the Tasmanians have about their whiskies! There is a real sense of pride and conviction.

Please note there are 50 limited BWW Belgrove X Transportation Exclusive Bottlings available - if you want one - grab a ticket. There will also be whiskies from Belgrove, Hillwood & Killara available….

You’ll not get a better value anywhere else in Ireland for a tasting of this magnitude!!

Looking Back

There is a particular kind of duchas — that sense of place, of belonging to the land — that the best whiskey makers carry with them wherever they go. Peter Bignell of Belgrove brought it in abundance. Farmer, distiller, and one of the great characters of the craft whiskey world, Peter held the room with the easy authority of someone who has nothing to prove and everything to share. The craic was mighty from the off. He spoke of rye crops and pot stills, of Tasmanian seasons and the particular quality of the island's water, and the audience leaned in like children around a seanchai. This was uisce beatha with a story attached — and what a story.

The four distilleries on the flight each brought something distinct to the table. Hillwood and Killara represented the cleaner, fruit-forward style that Tasmania's cool climate encourages, while Belgrove's rye-led expressions pushed into earthier, more assertive territory. But the session's conceptual heart belonged to Transportation Whiskey — a Tasmanian single pot still whiskey, triple distilled, built consciously on Irish whiskey tradition. Australian in provenance, Irish in method and spirit, it arrived in this Belfast room like something that had made a long and considered journey home. The irony of its name — Transportation — given Belfast's own complicated history with that word, was not lost on the room, and it made the dram taste all the richer for the reflection.

The jewel of the afternoon was the exclusive bottling: a limited run of just 50 BWW Belgrove X Transportation collaborative releases, available only to ticket holders. These went quickly — as they deserved to. A collaboration born from mutual respect between two producers who share more than geography might suggest, it was the kind of bottle that rewards opening slowly, with people worth talking to. If you were in that room and walked out with one, consider yourself among the fortunate.

This was the second of several Tasmanian sessions woven through the 2025 festival programme — those who caught Tasmanian Whiskies: Session 1 the day before had the advantage of context, but Session 2 stood fully on its own merits. The broader Tasmanian strand at BWW 2025 was one of the festival's quiet triumphs — a coherent argument, made dram by dram, that world-class whiskey is being made far beyond the traditional heartlands. For anyone who wants to trace that argument further, the Whiskey Map is a fine place to start.

At £15 a ticket, with four distilleries, an exclusive bottling opportunity, and one of the most generous and genuinely knowledgeable distillers working in the craft world today, this session delivered far beyond its price point. Sláinte mhór to Peter and to everyone who made the Tasmanian programme a highlight of Belfast Whiskey Week 2025. The sheugh between these two islands — one off Ireland, one off Australia — felt, for an afternoon on Commercial Court, very narrow indeed.