Marty McAuley's Whiskey Walking Tour | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 24 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/388

On a July Wednesday in 2024, a small band of whiskey lovers gathered outside City Hall, comfy shoes on and collars turned against the Belfast weather, looking for a man with a sign. What followed was one of the most quietly beloved events of Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 — a dander through the city with Marty McAuley, a storyteller, guide, and unapologetic enthusiast of the uisce beatha in all its Belfast-shaped glory.

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

There's a particular kind of magic that belongs to Belfast's streets — the sheughs and laneways, the Victorian stonework, the pubs that have held a thousand conversations you'll never know about. Marty McAuley understands this instinctively, and his annual walking tour has become one of those festival sessions that regulars protect fiercely on their schedules. This wasn't a ticketed masterclass in a formal venue. It was seanchas — the living oral tradition of a city talking about itself — delivered one dram at a time.

The group set off from City Hall with no rigid itinerary, guided instead by Marty's well-worn knowledge of where Belfast has been, where its whiskey culture came from, and where the good stuff is still being poured today. True to his word, attendees were fed and watered along the way, stopping at carefully chosen spots where whiskey and food told their own stories. There was nothing performative about it — no lectern, no PowerPoint — just a generous host sharing what he knows about a city he clearly loves.

The tour touched on the broader history of Belfast as a whiskey city, a narrative that runs deeper than many visitors realise. For those who wanted to dig further into that history after the walk, Session 83: Bushmills History offered a more structured masterclass on the same seam of Irish whiskey heritage, while the Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass explored some of the finest expressions that heritage has produced. Marty's tour, though, was something different — less about provenance notes and more about the duchas, the sense of belonging a place carries in its bones.

What made Session 52 stand out in the 2024 programme was its accessibility without any sacrifice of depth. At £15, it was one of the most generously priced events on the schedule, and it delivered far more than the ticket suggested. Newcomers to whiskey found themselves learning without realising it; seasoned drinkers found new corners of a familiar city. The group was small enough to feel intimate, the pace unhurried, the craic — as promised — entirely genuine. Fancy a look at more of what Belfast's whiskey scene has to offer beyond the tour route? The Belfast Whiskey Map is a fine place to keep exploring.

Sláinte to Marty for this one. Walking tours live or die on their guide, and in 2024 he proved again why this session has earned its loyal following. Belfast Whiskey Week is richer for having someone willing to put on their shoes, stand outside City Hall in whatever the July sky decides to throw at them, and simply say: Right — follow me.