Echlinville Distillery Day – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 24 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/764

Some events in the Belfast Whiskey Week calendar feel less like an outing and more like a duchas — a homecoming to somewhere that matters. The 2024 Echlinville Distillery Day was exactly that: a journey down to the Ards Peninsula to mark a genuine milestone in the story of Irish whiskey, as Echlinville released their very own Single Malt and Single Pot Still expressions into the world. History, as it turned out, smelled a great deal like a County Down barley field.

About This Event

The Yearly Pilgrimage to Echlinville Distillery. This time it’s even more magical! WHY? Well, they have only just released their own Single Malt and Single Pot Still Irish Whiskies! History was made! You’ll be entertained! Of course you will… Food, Whiskies and a Special Tour including the magnificent grounds and warehouses! We will meet you at City Hall at 11:45am – bus leaves at 12:00 and have you back in the City at 18:00 – just in time to head to another distillery if you like, or grab a meal with us!

Looking Back

The bus pulled away from City Hall at noon on a bright July Wednesday, carrying a group of whiskey lovers who knew they were in for something special — even if they couldn't quite have anticipated how special. Echlinville Distillery, sitting proud on its Kircubbin estate, holds a place unlike any other in the Northern Irish whiskey story: when it was granted its distilling licence, it became the first new distillery to open in Northern Ireland for more than 125 years. That weight of history is not worn lightly out on the Ards Peninsula, and the team there has always understood that what they are building belongs to the tír itself.

The release of Echlinville's own Single Malt and Single Pot Still Irish Whiskies gave the 2024 Distillery Day a charge of electricity that earlier visits — wonderful as they were — hadn't quite carried. For those who had attended the 2023 Warehouse Day, the progression felt tangible: there, the promise of something remarkable had hummed in the aged timber and copper. Here, that promise was poured into a glass and passed around with barely concealed pride. The drams were bold, considered, and unmistakably rooted in the barley grown on the very ground beneath our feet — field-to-bottle in the most literal sense imaginable.

The tour wound through the magnificent grounds and out into the warehouses, where the seanchas — the living lore — of the place settled around the group like the aroma of new make off a still. Guides spoke with genuine authority and warmth about every stage of production, from the estate-grown grain to the casks sleeping quietly in the dark. It was the kind of tour that makes you rethink what Irish whiskey can be when it is grown, distilled, and matured all in one place, by people who care not just about the product but about the landscape that produces it. Food was served, glasses were raised, and more than one sláinte rang out across the yard.

Echlinville has been a cornerstone of Belfast Whiskey Week since the festival's earliest years, and the Distillery Day format suits them perfectly — there is simply too much to see, taste, and understand about this place to confine it to a masterclass or an expo stand. For those who'd spent time at the Copeland Distillery Day earlier in the week, the contrast was instructive and joyful in equal measure: Northern Ireland's whiskey landscape is wide, varied, and thrillingly alive. The bus rolled back into Belfast just after six o'clock, passengers laden with bottles, memories, and, in more than a few cases, a strong desire to book again for 2025.

If you'd like to explore more of what Echlinville produces — including the Dunville's expressions that have become such a fixture across the festival — you can browse the full Echlinville collection here. And if the Ards Peninsula has whetted your appetite for the wider map of Northern Irish and Irish distilling, our Whiskey Map is the place to start planning your next pilgrimage.