BWW Whiskey Expo 2024 Trade Session | Belfast Whiskey Week

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

Filed: 26 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/052

On 26th July 2024, the grand halls of St Comgall's opened their doors not to the general public, but to the trade — the bartenders, buyers, distributors, retailers, and hoteliers who keep Ireland's uisce beatha flowing from bottle to glass every single day. The BWW Whiskey Expo 2024 Trade Session was a rare and genuinely valuable gathering: a free event designed to put the right people in the same room as the brands that matter.

About This Event

If you are in the Trade; working within any of the Bars & Pubs in Ireland, the Hotels in Northern Ireland, the Retail Outlets/Off Licences, Distribution Chains or Wholesalers - Then this Event is for you! A Free Event to meet the Whiskey and Spirit Brands from around Ireland and beyond. Use your Code Here to book Tickets!

Looking Back

There's a particular kind of energy in a room full of trade professionals when they're given space to explore without the pressure of a till. The Trade-Only session at the BWW Whiskey Expo 2024 had exactly that quality — purposeful, curious, and refreshingly honest. Buyers from retail chains stood alongside pub managers from across Ulster and beyond, all moving between stands at their own pace, asking the questions that don't always get asked at a standard consumer tasting. This was seanchas in action: the real exchange of knowledge between those who make and those who sell.

St Comgall's, the magnificent former primary school on Divis Street in the heart of Belfast, provided a fittingly dramatic backdrop. Its high ceilings and wide floors — spaces that once echoed with the noise of schoolchildren — held the quiet industry of professionals doing serious work. The venue carries a deep sense of duchas, of belonging to this city, and it lent the Expo an atmosphere that no purpose-built convention centre ever could. It felt, in the best possible way, like whiskey coming home to Belfast.

The floor was populated with whiskey and spirits brands from across Ireland and further afield — from the well-established names of the north coast to newer distilleries carving their own tir in a crowded market. Old Bushmills, Ireland's oldest licensed distillery, had a strong presence throughout the wider Expo week, with sessions ranging from deep historical dives to hands-on cask explorations. If you missed those, it's worth knowing that the Bushmills History MasterClass and the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass offered trade and consumers alike a masterful account of what makes that Antrim coast distillery so enduring.

For those in the trade who wanted to get under the skin of how whiskey is built from the ground up, the Expo floor was the place to do it. Conversations ranged from production methods and cask maturation to listing strategies, cocktail applications, and the ever-shifting preferences of Irish whiskey drinkers. The Sexton Deconstruction Showcase offered a fascinating counterpoint nearby — a reminder that the category continues to evolve in interesting directions. Sláinte to everyone who showed up ready to learn.

The Trade Session was, in many respects, the engine room of Belfast Whiskey Week — quieter than the public-facing events, but no less important. It's where relationships get built, orders get considered, and the next wave of whiskey knowledge begins its journey toward the bar top and the glass. If you work in the trade and haven't yet made this event part of your calendar, the sheugh between where you are and where you should be is a narrow one. We hope to see you at St Comgall's again.