Belfast Hidden Tours Whiskey Walk – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 20 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/700

There are few finer ways to greet a July morning in Belfast than with a dram in hand and a guide who knows where the bodies — and the distilleries — are buried. The Belfast Hidden Tours Whiskey & Walking Tour returned in 2024 as one of the festival's most distinctive offerings: part seanchas, part sightseeing, entirely its own thing, and priced at just £15 for an experience that felt worth considerably more.

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

Belfast Hidden Tours has always understood something that maps and guidebooks rarely capture — that a city's true character lives in its sheughs and back entries, in the stories that didn't make the tourist trail. For Belfast Whiskey Week 2024, that instinct was given full rein. Setting off daily from the charming surroundings of Daisies in Belfast City Centre, the tour wound its way through layers of the city's industrial and whiskey heritage, guided by figures who wore their civic pride as naturally as a well-worn coat.

The guides themselves were a revelation — well-versed in the duchas of the place, they brought to life the merchants, blenders, coopers and dreamers who built Belfast into one of the whiskey world's great industrial centres across the last few hundred centuries. This is history not as dry recitation but as living seanchas, delivered with wit and warmth. Attendees were encouraged to listen closely, and the reward for doing so was a genuinely richer understanding of why the uisce beatha flows so naturally through this city's veins. If you've spent time with the Bushmills History MasterClass, you'll know how deep that well runs — this tour offered the street-level companion to that deeper dive.

What set the 2024 edition apart, beyond the storytelling, were the delicious collaborative touches threaded through the walk. Participants were treated to bespoke whiskey-infused donuts from Oh Donuts and/or handcrafted chocolates from Daisies — a pairing that sounds indulgent and absolutely was. The sweetness of those accompaniments played beautifully against whatever dram was in hand, offering a reminder that whiskey culture in Belfast has always been about more than the glass. It's about the table, the company, the tír you're standing in.

For those who followed the wider festival programme, this tour served as an ideal grounding before heading into the more technical sessions. Whether you later found yourself exploring the nuance of Bushmills' core malt range or getting into the fine detail of the Sexton Deconstruction showcase, the walking tour gave everything a meaningful sense of place. You weren't just tasting whiskey — you were tasting a city.

At £15, this was one of the most generous entries in the 2024 programme. Hidden corners revealed, stories generously shared, a donut (or chocolate) to sweeten the journey — Belfast Hidden Tours delivered exactly what the festival at its best promises: a reason to look at this city, and this spirit, with fresh and grateful eyes. Sláinte mhaith.