Belfast Hidden Tours Walking Tour – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 19 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/180

There are few better ways to open a whiskey festival than stepping out into the city itself — cobblestones underfoot, a dram in hand, and centuries of duchas waiting around every corner. Belfast Hidden Tours set the tone for Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 with their signature bespoke whiskey and walking tour, a session that combined the living history of Belfast's industrial whiskey past with the kind of warm, sharp-witted storytelling that makes a city feel like home.

About This Event

Belfast Hidden Tours kicks off the Festival daily, with a great opportunity to explore the City while sipping a few drams on the way. This Bespoke walk combines Belfast Hidden Tours' love of Whiskey Heritage, Belfast Histories and some great hidden places that need to be explored and not forgotten. Be prepared to listen attentively; don't miss the stories of those individuals and businesses that have built the Belfast Industry through the last few hundred years. Industrial Whiskey and Heritage is brought to life by well versed guides who have a great sense of humour and pride in their City! This walking tour will also include one of our collaborative Whiskey Donuts from "Oh Donuts" and/or bespoke Chocolates from "Daisies".

Looking Back

From the first step, it was clear this was no ordinary tour. Belfast Hidden Tours has built its reputation on finding the stories that the grand civic histories tend to overlook — the distillers, the merchants, the workers, and the buildings that shaped an industry over hundreds of years. Their guides carried that knowledge lightly but wore their pride in Belfast openly, weaving together the threads of the city's whiskey heritage into something that felt less like a lecture and more like a long conversation with someone who really knows their seanchas.

The route took in some of Belfast city centre's most rewarding hidden corners — places that regular visitors walk past without a second glance but which, in the right hands, open up into rich and sometimes surprising narratives. The guides drew vivid pictures of the industrial whiskey trade that once pulsed through these streets, connecting the grand ambitions of long-gone distilleries to the remarkable revival that now sees Belfast and the wider North firmly back on the global whiskey map. For those curious to go deeper into that Ulster whiskey story, Session 83: Bushmills History (MasterClass) offers a complementary dive into the heritage of Ireland's most iconic northern distillery.

What made this particular session feel genuinely festive — and distinctly Belfast — were the edible additions. Attendees received a collaborative whiskey donut from the ever-inventive Oh Donuts and bespoke chocolates from Daisies, the charming city centre restaurant that served as home base for the tour. Daisies brings a real focus to local ingredients and Irish whiskey experiences, and their involvement gave the event a grounded, neighbourhood character that set it apart from anything you might find at a more polished corporate tasting. Sweet and peaty in equal measure — very Belfast, really.

At £15, this was one of the festival's most accessible sessions, and arguably one of its most rewarding for newcomers and seasoned whiskey lovers alike. There's something clarifying about tasting whiskey in the places where it was made, traded, and drunk for generations — a reminder that uisce beatha is never just a drink but always a piece of a place and a people. Those who found themselves hungry for more after the walk had no shortage of directions to turn; the festival's range of distillery deep-dives, including the Bushmills Core Malts Introduction and the Bushmills Cask Strength Mini-MasterClass, offered the perfect next step into Ulster's liquid heritage.

Belfast Hidden Tours kicked off each festival day in 2024 with this session, and it's easy to see why. Starting a whiskey week by walking the city, hearing its stories, and eating a whiskey donut is about as good an opening act as any festival could ask for. Sláinte mhaith to the guides, the makers, and everyone who laced up their shoes and joined in.