Belfast Hidden Tours Walking Whiskey Tour | Belfast Whiskey Week 2023

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2023
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 5 min
Ref: BWW/23/108

Some events sit you down and pour the city into a glass. This one made you walk it. On a crisp Sunday afternoon in October 2023, Belfast Hidden Tours led festival-goers through the streets, laneways, and snugs of Belfast for one of BWW2023's most beloved experiences — Walking, Whiskies & Whispers. Three hours, five drams, and more than a few stories that deserved to be told.

About This Event

Both Fionnuala and Conor take turns to bring our Festival Goers the chance to walk through Belfast; sampling our local whiskies, Festival Food and visiting great pubs. 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 food from “Tribal”. Timeslot: 3pm-6pm Start Time: 3pm Duration: 3hrs Venue: Multiple Locations Drinks: 5 Drams Type: Walking Tour Walking: Be Prepared to Walk around Belfast. Some of the areas & venues may not be fully accessible, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. Disclaimers Please note that individual dietary requirements are not being catered for with any food at this event. Each Brand/Distillery and Collaborative Partner have agreed to our Min/Max Pour Policy. Please Respect this, and enjoy your festival responsibly. Festival Participants who are deemed to be too inebriated, or are not respecting themselves, will not be permitted into events and venues. ALL Hosts/Ushers/Collaborators and Venue Staff have the right to refuse participants without question and recourse. Please Drink Responsibly. All events are only available to those 18 years old and over. Do not purchase tickets if you are under the age of 18. Be prepared to produce ID if required. Venue staff & ushers may ask you to provide ID when showing your valid tickets. You may be refused enter to events if you can’t prove your age. Some venues may change, if they do, you will be notified. All events are subject to changes out of the control of the festival organisers. Any issues, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. NO Refunds will be given. Please only buy tickets if you are prepared to attend the event. Tickets are transferable. If you are going to transfer tickets please email, marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com

Looking Back

Fionnuala and Conor are the kind of guides who make you feel like you've been given a key to a city you thought you already knew. Their love of Belfast's seanchas — the living oral tradition of place, people, and industry — was evident from the first step. Gathering their group at the start point just as the afternoon light settled low over the rooftops, they wasted no time in threading together whiskey heritage and city history into something genuinely compelling. This wasn't a pub crawl dressed up in a tweed jacket. It was a proper reckoning with the uisce beatha culture that shaped industrial Belfast, told by people with real duchas in this tír.

The route wound through some of Belfast's less-trumpeted corners — the kind of places the tour buses miss and the guidebooks barely footnote. At each stop, a dram was poured and a story unfurled. The guides drew vivid portraits of the individuals and businesses who built Belfast's whiskey industry across centuries, mapping the rise and the long, sorrowful decline of distilling in the city, and the slow, proud revival now underway. Attendees weren't just tasting whiskey; they were tasting context. For those keen to explore that geography further, the Belfast Whiskey Map offers a wonderful companion to the kind of thinking this tour sets in motion.

The food element was, frankly, one of the highlights of the afternoon. Oh Donuts delivered a collaborative whiskey donut that managed to be both ridiculous and brilliant in equal measure — the kind of thing that provokes genuine delight and immediate Instagram guilt. Tribal's bespoke food offering rounded things out with something more substantial, a reminder that eating well and drinking well aren't competing ideas. Sláinte to both partners for understanding that festival food can be more than an afterthought.

What set this particular timeslot apart — the Sunday 3pm departure — was its atmosphere. By late afternoon on the last day of the festival, there was a particular warmth among the group, a shared ease that comes from a week well spent. Strangers compared notes on the sessions they'd attended earlier in the week, locals pointed out their own hidden corners as the group passed, and the guides wove all of it into the fabric of the walk without missing a beat. If you're curious how this event compared to Belfast Hidden Tours' earlier outings across the week, Event 5 and Event 20 ran the same bespoke route at different points in the festival, each carrying its own character depending on the crowd and the light.

BWW2023's walking tour programme was one of its quiet strengths, and Belfast Hidden Tours sat at the heart of it. For those who found their way onto this walk, the city will look a little different on every subsequent visit — the sheugh between knowing a place and truly understanding it measurably narrowed. That's a rare thing for a three-hour afternoon out, and it speaks to exactly why events like this belong at the centre of what Belfast Whiskey Week is trying to do. Walking With Marty offered its own take on the city's whiskey story, and together these tours made a compelling case that the best way to understand Irish whiskey is to put your boots on.