Marty McAuley's Belfast Whiskey Walking Tour | BWW 2024

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

Filed: 26 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/820

There are masterclasses held in gilded rooms, and then there are the ones held on the open streets of Belfast, with the wind off the lough at your back and a dram waiting round the next corner. On 26th July 2024, Marty McAuley's Whiskey, Wonderings & Walking Tour gathered its willing band of wanderers outside City Hall and set off into the city — comfy shoes on, curiosity intact, and appetites ready for whatever came next.

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

From the moment Marty planted himself outside City Hall with his Belfast Whiskey Week sign, there was no mistaking the energy of the thing. This wasn't a tour that asked you to sit still and listen politely. It was a dander — in the truest Ulster sense of the word — a rambling, unhurried movement through the streets of a city that has more whiskey history buried beneath its pavements than most people realise. Marty's gift is making you feel that history not as a lecture, but as something alive, something that belongs to the place and to the people walking through it.

The format was deceptively simple. A small group, a loose route, and a host who clearly loves Belfast the way you love somewhere you've taken the time to truly know — its sheughs and its grandeur in equal measure. Along the way, food and whiskey appeared with the kind of easy generosity that the best hospitality always has: not showy, just right. Attendees were fed and watered as promised, each dram arriving with a story attached, each story rooted in the tír and the duchas of this particular whiskey city. For those who wanted to go deeper into the heritage of Ulster's most celebrated distillery, Session 83: Bushmills History offered a more formal companion to the seanchas Marty wove through the streets.

What made this session stand apart in the 2024 programme was its refusal to separate the whiskey from the place that made it. Too often, tastings happen in a bubble — beautiful, worthwhile bubbles, but bubbles nonetheless. Marty's tour insisted on context. Belfast's identity as a whiskey city didn't happen in a vacuum, and walking its streets while hearing its stories made that case more powerfully than any tasting note could. It also made the drams taste better, which is no small thing. Those curious about how Belfast's whiskey culture connects across the island might also enjoy exploring our Whiskey Map to trace the wider landscape.

The price point — £15 — was quietly remarkable for what was delivered: guided local expertise, food, whiskey, and a few hours of genuine Belfast craic. It was the kind of value that makes you wonder why more festivals don't put their stories on the street where they belong. Marty McAuley is the sort of guide who reminds you that the best whiskey education doesn't always happen behind a table. Sometimes it happens mid-stride, somewhere between a side street and a punchline, with a glass in your hand and a city opening itself up around you. If you missed this one, keep an eye on the event page — and make sure your comfy shoes are ready for next time. Sláinte.