Irish Whiskey Review Walking Tour | 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/25/524

Few events on the Belfast Whiskey Week calendar manage to weave the uisce beatha into the very fabric of the city itself, but the Irish Whiskey Review Walking Tour did exactly that. Guided by the irrepressible Marty McAuley — one of Belfast's most trusted whiskey voices and a walking tour guide of genuine distinction — this was a journey through the tír as much as through the glass. Setting off each afternoon from the Room2 Hotel on Queen Street, attendees stepped out into a Belfast that had stories to tell at every corner.

About This Event

We are lucky to have Marty McAuley from Irish Whiskey Review taking our seconded bespoke walking tour of Belfast’s Whiskey Heritage and Whiskey Industry as well as an in depth historical review of Belfast of the years. Marty has wealth of whiskey knowledge and is also one of the best walking tour guides in the city. This combination, and his cameo role at the Friend at Hand has him well placed to deliver a walking tour like no other in the city.

Be prepared for a good walk, great whiskies and delightful snacks, as you visit Belfast Landmarks, pubs and eateries. Your love for whiskey will be enhanced, your love for history will grow, and your love for Belfast will flourish. Sip on 4 local whiskies and devour our food collaborations with local artisans, including; Whiskey Donuts, Chocolates, Burgers, Chips and Ice-Pops.

Meeting Point to Start: Inside Our Hotel Partner; Room2 Hotel, Queen Street, Belfast BT1 6EE at 3pm each day Friday 18th to Saturday 26th July

Looking Back

There is a particular kind of seanchas that only a city's streets can carry — the layered memory of place, commerce, and community that no distillery tour or tasting room can fully replicate. Marty McAuley, the mind behind Irish Whiskey Review, understands this instinctively. His bespoke walking tour for Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 didn't just pass through Belfast's whiskey heritage; it inhabited it. From the moment the group gathered inside Room2 Hotel and headed out into the afternoon light, there was a sense that this was going to be something more than a stroll between pours.

Marty's dual fluency — in whiskey knowledge and in the city's own history — gave the tour a texture that was hard to manufacture. Landmarks that many Belfasters pass daily without a second glance were revealed as sites of genuine distilling heritage or connected, sometimes surprisingly, to the story of Irish whiskey's rise, fall, and remarkable renaissance. His cameo role at the Friend at Hand pub added a local warmth and authenticity that grounded the whole experience firmly in the duchas of the city. This wasn't a rehearsed script; it was a conversation between a knowledgeable guide and a city he clearly loves.

The four local whiskies sampled along the route were chosen with care, each one anchored to a moment, a venue, or a narrative thread in the tour's wider story. But Belfast Whiskey Week has always believed that whiskey tastes better in good company and good context, and the food collaborations on offer here proved the point emphatically. Whiskey-glazed donuts, handcrafted chocolates, proper burgers, chips, and — in a touch of pure Belfast wit — whiskey ice-pops: these weren't afterthoughts but genuine pairings that drew knowing nods and more than a few delighted surprises from the crowd. At £30, it was one of the festival's finest value propositions. If you're curious about how other walking experiences have mapped the city's drinking culture across BWW editions, Irish Whiskey Review: Walking With Marty from a previous year offers a fascinating point of comparison, while the Belfast Hidden Tours: Walking, Whiskies & Whispers event explored some of the same nocturnal streets with its own distinct atmosphere.

What distinguished Event 45 from a simple pub crawl — and it deserves to be said plainly — was the quality of the intellectual company on offer. Marty's depth of knowledge about the Irish whiskey industry, its history, its present producers, and its complex politics of identity and geography, gave every dram an added dimension. Attendees who arrived thinking they knew their Bushmills from their Waterford left with a considerably more nuanced picture of what Irish whiskey actually means, and why Belfast, specifically, matters in that story. You can explore more of the festival's whiskey geography through our Whiskey Map, which traces the producers and venues that make this city such fertile ground for a week like this.

Running daily from Friday 18th through Saturday 26th July 2025, the tour quickly built a quiet reputation among festival-goers as a highlight of the week — the kind of event people mention unprompted when asked what stayed with them. Sláinte to Marty and to everyone who laced up their shoes and trusted the streets of Belfast to do some of the storytelling.