Echlinville Distillery Day – Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/25/076

Some events at Belfast Whiskey Week feel like a treat. The Echlinville Distillery Day feels like a calling. On Wednesday 23rd July 2025, a coachload of whiskey lovers departed Room 2 Hotel at noon, bound for the Ards Peninsula and the beating heart of Northern Ireland's whiskey revival — Echlinville Distillery, the first new distillery to open in Northern Ireland in over 125 years.

About This Event

23rd July 2025: Leaves from Room 2 Hotel
Departs Belfast: 12:00pm
Departs Venue: 16:45pm
Duration: 6hrs

Belfast Whiskey Week would not be complete without the pilgrimage to Echlinville — a truly exceptional distillery and the first of the new era in Northern Ireland.

With the oldest whiskey of the new generation, Echlinville has revived the historic Dunville's Belfast brand, and released a wave of award-winning spirits—including Best Irish Single Malt. They've also brought us Bán Poitín, Weavers Gin, and Feckin Vodka, to name just a few.

This grain-to-glass distillery won’t disappoint—delivering bold taste, exciting experiences, and a touch of eccentricity. (If you spot a tank on your tour, don’t worry—it's meant to be there!)

Enjoy a full tour of the extensive grounds and production facility, including the grain silos, fermentation hall, stills, and warehouse. You’ll be guided through the Echlinville story while seeing every part of the process firsthand.

What's included:

A guided, historic distillery tour
Exclusive tastings from Echlinville, Old Comber & Dunville's
A warehouse tasting finale
A BBQ feast featuring Ballyboley Dexter, Pasture for Life Certified Beef

From field to flavour—this is a BWW experience not to be missed.

Looking Back

There is something quietly profound about making the journey out to Echlinville. The city falls away, the peninsula opens up, and by the time the estate comes into view — grain silos rising against the sky, the old stone of the place rooted in the tír like it never left — you understand why Belfast Whiskey Week keeps coming back. This is not a set-dressed visitor experience. It is a working distillery in every sense, grain-to-glass in the most literal way, and the 2025 Distillery Day made certain that every guest felt that reality in full.

The guided tour was the kind that earns its reputation. Guests moved through the full sweep of production — from the grain silos and fermentation hall, where the duchas of the place is most palpable, through to the copper stills and on into the warehouse, where the spirit rests in quiet wood and time does its slow, unhurried work. Echlinville grows its own barley on the estate, and the seanchas of that process — the story of soil and season and still — was told with the kind of easy authority that only comes from people who genuinely live it. And yes, there is a tank on the grounds. There was reassurance that it is, in fact, supposed to be there.

The tastings were the heart of the afternoon. Guests worked their way through expressions from Echlinville's own range, alongside drams from the revived Dunville's Belfast brand and the historic Old Comber marque — a rare privilege, and a reminder that Echlinville carries more than its own story. The warehouse tasting that closed out the formal programme had that particular atmosphere that only bonded warehouses can conjure: cool air, the faint sweetness of maturing spirit, and a shared sense that something real is being tasted here. Sláinte to whoever decided that was the right note to end on.

Then came the feast. Ballyboley Dexter beef, Pasture for Life certified, served hot off the BBQ in the summer air — the kind of meal that earns the phrase 'from field to flavour' rather than simply claiming it. It was a fitting conclusion to a day built entirely around provenance, craft, and the honest pleasure of knowing exactly where things come from. For those who wanted to explore more of what Echlinville brought to the wider festival, the brand's Welcome to the Warehouse event from a previous year gives a sense of just how consistently they deliver in that particular setting.

The coach departed Echlinville at 16:45, and the return to Belfast had the particular warmth of a day well spent — good whiskey, good food, and the kind of conversation that flows when strangers share something worth talking about. If you're the sort of person who believes that the best way to understand uisce beatha is to stand where it's made, the Echlinville Distillery Day is as close to essential as Belfast Whiskey Week gets. Those curious about how it sits within the broader landscape of the festival's distillery experiences might find the Whiskey Map a useful companion for planning future pilgrimages.