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: 3 min
Ref: BWW/25/508

Some events sit you down and pour whiskey at you. This one put on your boots and took you out into the city itself. Marty McAuley of Irish Whiskey Review led Belfast Whiskey Week 2025's bespoke heritage walking tour across nine days in July, threading together landmarks, local pubs, artisan food, and four carefully chosen local whiskies into something that felt less like a ticketed event and more like being shown Belfast by someone who genuinely loves it.

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

The tour gathered each afternoon at Room2 Hotel on Queen Street — BWW2025's hotel partner and a fitting threshold between the comfortable and the curious. By 3pm, groups were out the door and into the city, following Marty through streets whose layers of history rarely announce themselves to the passing stranger. That's what a guide like Marty does: he reads the city aloud. His knowledge of Belfast's built environment, its whiskey past, and its complicated, compelling duchas sits comfortably alongside a gift for storytelling that keeps a group moving, listening, and laughing in equal measure.

The whiskey strand of the tour was no afterthought. Four local drams anchored the walk at key stops — each chosen to reflect both the character of its surroundings and the shape of the wider Belfast whiskey story. Ulster's uisce beatha revival has been well documented, but experiencing it glass-in-hand, standing in front of the places where that story actually unfolded, gave the tasting notes a context no masterclass could replicate. Marty's role at the Friend at Hand gave him an insider's understanding of how whiskey lives in this city's social fabric, and it showed.

Then there was the food. Belfast Whiskey Week has always understood that whiskey and community are best expressed through generosity, and the artisan collaborations on this tour leaned hard into that spirit. Whiskey-infused donuts, handcrafted chocolates, proper burgers, chips, and — perhaps most memorably — whiskey ice-pops on a warm July afternoon. Local makers brought their craft to bear on each pairing, and the result was a route through the city that fed people in every sense of the word. This is the kind of seanchas that sticks: not just what you tasted, but where you stood when you tasted it.

For those who've followed Belfast's walking tour scene, Marty will already be a familiar name. He featured in earlier BWW events including Irish Whiskey Review: Walking With Marty, and the format has only grown in confidence since then. Complementary experiences like Belfast Hidden Tours: Walking, Whiskies & Whispers and Belfast Walking Tours: Belfast's Public Houses & Art Trail have collectively mapped out a walking festival within the festival — a way of understanding this city's relationship with whiskey that no single venue could contain.

At £30, this was one of the most generous propositions of the entire BWW2025 programme. Nine days of departure times meant it reached well beyond the dedicated enthusiast — curious visitors, locals rediscovering their own tír, whiskey newcomers and old hands alike found their way onto the route. If there is a single event that captures what Belfast Whiskey Week is trying to do — connect people to whiskey, to history, and to each other in this particular city — then Event 110 made a very strong case. Sláinte, Marty. That was a tour worth every step.