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: 21 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/292

There are few better ways to greet a festival morning than stepping out into Belfast's streets with a dram in hand and a guide full of stories. Belfast Hidden Tours opened each day of Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 with their bespoke whiskey and walking tour — a session that wove together the city's industrial past, its whiskey heritage, and a few delicious surprises from some brilliant local makers. At £15, it was arguably the best-value ticket of the entire festival.

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 off, this wasn't a tour that asked you to stand politely and nod. Belfast Hidden Tours brought a warmth and wit to proceedings that felt entirely of this city — guides who clearly carry a deep dúchas for Belfast, its people, and the uisce beatha that once flowed through its veins in quantities that would raise an eyebrow even today. Attendees were led through corners of the city centre that even many Belfastians have passed without a second glance, each stop unlocking a layer of seanchaí-worthy storytelling about the distillers, merchants, and characters who built an industry here across the last few centuries.

The whiskey heritage woven through the tour was genuinely illuminating. Belfast's industrial whiskey story is one too often overshadowed by the big names of the north coast, and there was something quietly powerful about standing in the tír of the city itself and hearing those overlooked chapters read aloud. Guides didn't just relay facts — they conjured people, rivalries, ambitions, and losses, making the past feel present in the way only good storytelling can. If that thread of history interests you, it pairs beautifully with a deeper dive: the Bushmills History MasterClass offered a complementary look at how Ulster's whiskey tradition evolved across the water on the north Antrim coast.

The tour wasn't all history and heritage, mind you. Partway through, attendees received one of the festival's more unexpected pleasures — a collaborative whiskey donut from Oh Donuts and bespoke chocolates from Daisies, the charming city-centre restaurant that served as a home base for the session. Daisies itself is a fine place — its focus on local ingredients and Irish whiskey experiences makes it a natural ally for a festival like this — and the chocolates were every bit as considered as the drams that accompanied them. Few things pair as well with a good single malt as chocolate made by someone who actually understands flavour.

For those whose appetite for the wider festival story was whetted by the tour's focus on heritage and craft, there was plenty more to explore across the week. The Sexton Deconstruction Showcase offered a sharper analytical lens on a Belfast-connected whiskey, while sessions like the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass took that Ulster whiskey narrative into real depth. The walking tour, in many ways, served as the ideal prologue — context and character before the detail.

Sláinte to Belfast Hidden Tours for once again kicking off the festival with something that felt genuinely rooted rather than packaged. This is the kind of session that reminds you why Belfast Whiskey Week matters beyond the glass — because the best whiskey stories are always inseparable from the people and places that made them. If this tour runs again, book early. The sheugh between a good walk and a great dram turns out to be very narrow indeed.