Killara Distillery Tasting Session | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 22 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/956

They flew halfway round the world and fetched up, uisce beatha in hand, in one of Belfast's most characterful wee rooms — and every drop was worth the journey. Session 34 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 gathered three of Tasmania's finest small-batch producers — Spring Bay, Killara, and Launceston — beneath the low ceilings and good craic of the Angel & 2 Bibles for an afternoon of straight whiskey tasting that reminded everyone in the room just how far this craft has travelled, both literally and figuratively.

About This Event

We Welcome back our friends from Tasmania! We are delighted that they have flown halfway round the world to get involved in Belfast Whiskey Week - Let's get out and support them this year! In this fourth session, you get the opportunity to sample whiskey from Spring Bay, Killara & Launceston in the quirky and desirable Angel & 2 Bibles, just above the Deer's Head.

Looking Back

There's something quietly remarkable about a distiller crossing twelve time zones to pour whiskey in Belfast on a July evening. The Tasmanian contingent at BWW 2024 didn't just show up — they arrived with the easy confidence of producers who know their liquid speaks for itself. Session 34 was the fourth in BWW's dedicated Tasmanian programme that year, and by this point in the week, a real sense of duchas — of belonging, of the spirit finding its place — had settled around these southern hemisphere guests. They weren't novelties. They were colleagues.

Killara Distillery sat at the heart of this particular session. A boutique operation from the Tasmanian highlands, Killara produces small-batch single malt with an attentiveness to land and climate that will feel immediately recognisable to anyone who has thought seriously about why place matters in whiskey. The same wet Atlantic logic that shapes a Bushmills malt — the core malts explored in such detail during BWW 2021 — finds a counterpart in the cool, damp air of Tasmania's interior. Different tír, same truth: terrain leaves its mark. Killara's whiskies wore theirs with quiet pride.

Spring Bay and Launceston rounded out the trio with their own distinct characters, and the contrast between the three distilleries made for a genuinely educational tasting flight. This was a Straight Whiskey Tasting in the best sense — no frills, no theatre, just whiskey, context, and conversation. The Angel & 2 Bibles, perched just above the Deer's Head in Belfast's Music Quarter, proved a fitting setting: quirky, intimate, the kind of room where seanchas flows as freely as the drams. Attendees who'd been following the full Tasmanian strand across the week brought cumulative knowledge; newcomers were welcomed without condescension.

At £15 a session, this represented the kind of value that Belfast Whiskey Week has built its reputation on — access to world-class producers in genuinely good company. It's worth noting that Killara's presence at BWW 2024 extended well beyond Session 34; they featured across multiple tastings and the Tasmanian Whiskey Dinner, making them one of the week's most embedded international guests. You can explore Killara's full range on the BWW shop if the retrospective has you reaching for your glass. And if you want to understand how Belfast Whiskey Week maps the full world of whiskey — from the Antrim coast to the Tasmanian highlands — the BWW Whiskey Map is the place to start.

Sláinte to Spring Bay, Killara, and Launceston — and to every attendee who made room on a Monday in July for something genuinely new. The sheugh between Tasmania and Belfast turned out to be considerably narrower than the map suggests.