Glens of Antrim Distillery Showcase – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 19 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/020

There are landscapes in Ulster that feel like they were made to produce whiskey, and the Glens of Antrim — steep, green, and tumbling straight to the North Atlantic — sit near the top of that list. On 19th July 2024, Belfast Whiskey Week welcomed Glens of Antrim Distillery to the eccentric surrounds of the Angel & 2 Bibles for a Straight Whiskey Tasting that felt as much like a conversation about place and family as it did a formal tasting session.

About This Event

We Welcome Glens of Antrim Distillery to this year's festival in the quirky Angel & 2 Bibles where we get the opportunity to explore their Award Winning Whiskies. This tasting gives us a good opportunity to find out more about the plans for the distillery, and the vision, the well known Glens family - the McKillops - has for the picturesque North Coast.

Looking Back

The Angel & 2 Bibles is one of those Belfast venues that rewards the curious — a little off the obvious trail, full of character, and entirely suited to an evening that asked its guests to pay close attention. It was a fitting setting for the McKillop family, whose connection to the Glens runs deep enough to count as genuine dúchas — that sense of belonging to a place that no amount of marketing copy can manufacture. When the McKillops talk about the North Coast, you understand they are not selling a postcard; they are describing home.

The session centred on Glens of Antrim's award-winning range, with each pour offering a chance to taste what that particular stretch of Ulster coastline and its people are trying to say in whiskey form. The whiskies carried the kind of character that comes from intention — the McKillops have a clear vision for what they want their distillery to mean, and that vision was legible in the glass. Guests had the chance to ask questions directly, and the conversation ranged from the technical to the philosophical: how do you build something new in a region that already carries so much seanchas?

Context, as always, made the drams richer. The North Antrim coast is already home to one of Ireland's most storied distilleries — Old Bushmills has its own remarkable history that stretches back centuries — and it was genuinely exciting to consider what a younger, family-driven operation might add to that tradition rather than simply echo it. The McKillops are not trying to replicate what came before; they are carving their own sheugh in the hillside.

At £20 a ticket, this was one of the more accessible sessions on the 2024 programme, and it drew a crowd that mixed seasoned whiskey enthusiasts with visitors discovering the North Coast distilling scene for the first time. That range of experience in the room made for a lively Q&A, with the McKillops fielding questions about cask selection, local barley, and the longer arc of what they are building with patience and evident care. You left with the distinct feeling that this distillery is still in its early chapters — and that the best of the story is ahead of it.

If the Glens of Antrim Distillery Showcase at BWW2024 did one thing above all else, it planted a flag. This is a producer worth watching, a family with genuine conviction, and a tír — a territory — that deserves to be on every serious Irish whiskey map. If you want to trace where they sit in the wider Ulster whiskey landscape, our Whiskey Map is a good place to start. Sláinte mhaith to the McKillops — and to the uisce beatha still to come.