Cocktail Takeover at Common Market | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 25 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/980

On 25 July 2024, Belfast's Common Market threw open its doors to one of the most spirited evenings in the Belfast Whiskey Week calendar — the Cocktail Takeover. Ten whiskey brands, ten bespoke creations, and a room full of people who knew exactly what to do with a well-made glass of uisce beatha. This was whiskey cocktail culture at its most unapologetically Belfast.

About This Event

NEW VENUE - COMMON MARKET

We are welcomed back to CommonMarket thanks to Management for letting us in last minute!

This year's Cocktail TakeOver will include 10 whiskey brands who will each create their own bespoke cocktail for the Festival. Some of these festival cocktails will be showcased in partner bars and pubs across the week, with your chance to taste 5 of them for £35 at this event. This TakeOver event is unique- with Belfast taking the lead on perfecting the best whiskey cocktails. This year, you will also have the opportunity to vote for the best tasting cocktails, with the brand winner and the mixologist being awarded at our Irish Whiskey Industry Awards on Saturday the 27th. We will also give a lucky festival-goer the chance to come to the meal!

Looking Back

There's something fitting about a last-minute venue becoming the scene of an event people talked about for weeks afterwards. Common Market — a contemporary City Centre restaurant that takes its food and drink seriously — stepped in to host the 2024 Cocktail Takeover when the original plans shifted, and it turned out to be a pairing as natural as a good malt and an October evening. The space has the kind of easy confidence that doesn't need to try hard, and on the night it wore the festival well.

The format was simple and generous in equal measure: for £35, attendees worked their way through five of the ten bespoke cocktails crafted specifically for BWW2024. Each brand had brought its own vision to the glass — not just a whiskey on ice, but a considered, creative expression of what their spirit could become in the right hands. This wasn't a passive tasting. The room carried that particular buzz that comes when people are genuinely comparing notes, debating favourites, and occasionally being surprised by something they hadn't expected to love. The seanchas — the living conversation — was part of the experience.

What gave the evening real stakes was the voting element. Every attendee had a say in which cocktail and which mixologist deserved to be crowned at the Irish Whiskey Industry Awards on Saturday 27 July. That democratic edge sharpened attention in the best possible way: people weren't just sipping, they were considering. It also gave the brands and their bartenders something genuine to compete for, and that competitive warmth — friendly but real — was palpable across the room. As a further touch, one lucky festival-goer was drawn to attend the Awards meal itself, adding a little extra anticipation to the evening. For those who wanted to explore the cocktails beyond this single session, several of the ten were being showcased in partner bars and pubs across the city throughout the week — Belfast wearing its whiskey identity across its whole tír, not just in one room.

The Cocktail Takeover sits within a wider week that consistently rewards those who go deep into the world of Irish whiskey. If the cocktail format sparked your curiosity about the spirits themselves, Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 offered no shortage of routes further in — from the craft of blending to the history written into every distillery wall. Sessions like the Bushmills History MasterClass and the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass offered the kind of dúchas — that deep rootedness in place and tradition — that reminds you whiskey is never just a drink. And for those taken by the more playful side of Irish whiskey's personality, the Sexton Deconstruction Showcase was another session well worth the time.

What the Cocktail Takeover at Common Market proved, conclusively, is that Belfast needs no permission to lead on whiskey cocktail culture. The brands brought craft, the mixologists brought imagination, and the people of this city brought exactly the kind of opinionated, engaged, good-humoured audience that makes an evening like this worth running. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who raised a glass on the night — and to Common Market for stepping up when it counted.