Marty McAuley Walking Tour | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 20 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/772

Some events ask you to sit down, hush up, and learn. Marty McAuley's Whiskey, Wonderings & Walking Tour at Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 asked you to do the opposite — lace up your shoes, step out into the Belfast air, and let the city itself do the teaching. Part guided dander, part whiskey education, part living seanchas, this was one of the most distinctive sessions on the 2024 programme.

About This Event

There’s no easier way to put this: Put your comfy shoes on, dress for Belfast Weather, grab yer ticket and meet me at City Hall. I’ll be wearing clothes. Easy to find sure, with a Whiskey Week sign. Once all the stragglers get here - we’re off! Then it’s just me, you, and a handful of other chaps and lassies, as we dander about Belfast in search of good craic, good whiskey and good places to tell my stories. This walking tour is full of food, whiskies and me imparting the impartiality, expelling the experiences and holding forth the history of this Great Whiskey City. No need to eat before hand - I’ll feed and water you, promise - Marty McAuley

Looking Back

It began, as Marty promised, at City Hall. There he stood — sign in hand, warm grin deployed — waiting for the stragglers to filter in from Royal Avenue and Donegall Square. There's something quietly thrilling about gathering on the steps of that great Portland stone building with a small group of strangers, knowing that whiskey and wandering lie ahead. The city hummed around the group, indifferent and magnificent, as Marty made his introductions and the tour set off into Belfast's winding streets.

What made this session so memorable was the way Marty wove place and dram together. Belfast is, as he was at pains to remind everyone, a Great Whiskey City — not just in the present tense, but deep in its duchas, its inherited character. The streets themselves carry the memory of a trade that shaped this part of the world for centuries, and Marty had the gift of making that history feel immediate rather than archived. He didn't lecture; he told stories the way a good uncle tells stories — with digressions, embellishments, and the occasional eyebrow raised for effect. For those who wanted to go deeper into the distilling heritage behind some of the drams on offer, Session 83: Bushmills History from a previous festival offered a complementary deep-dive into the North Coast's greatest distilling legacy.

True to his word, Marty fed and watered his charges well. Food appeared at the right moments — a reminder that whiskey is best enjoyed in good company, with something in the stomach — and the drams were chosen to tell a story rather than simply to impress. The pacing was generous without being indulgent; there was always time to pause, look up at a building, catch a detail in a streetscape, and hear the story that lived there. Belfast reveals itself differently on foot, and filtered through Marty's particular lens, it felt genuinely alive with whiskey history. Those curious about the liquid itself might also enjoy exploring Session 2: Bushmills Core Malts, which placed some of the region's foundational whiskeys under proper scrutiny.

The group that gathered for this tour came from all corners — locals who knew the streets but not the stories, visitors who knew the whiskeys but not the city, and a few seasoned festival-goers who simply trusted Marty's reputation and turned up. That mix was part of the magic. By the end, with the last dram raised and a collective sláinte echoing off the walls of wherever Marty had chosen to finish, the group felt less like strangers than like people who had shared something genuinely particular. You can browse the full Belfast Whiskey Map to keep exploring the city's uisce beatha landscape between festivals.

At £15 a ticket, the Whiskey, Wonderings & Walking Tour was one of the best-value sessions of BWW 2024 — not because it was cheap, but because it gave something that a tasting room simply cannot: the tír beneath your feet, the stories carried on the wind off the lough, and a Belfast that tastes, just a little, of whiskey.