McConnell's Distillery Tour – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 21 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/364

There are few words in the whiskey lover's vocabulary quite as charged as first. On 21st July 2024, during Belfast Whiskey Week, guests who booked onto the McConnell's Signature Distillery Tour became among the very first people in the world to walk through the doors of one of Belfast's most storied new distilling homes — a place where history and uisce beatha meet in spectacular fashion.

About This Event

Book in for a Signature Tour with McConnell's and spend some time in one of Belfast's most historic buildings. Having only opened its doors a few months ago, you will be one of the first in the World to experience this truly spectacular Distillery and Visitor Attraction. It is only a few minutes walk from the City Centre and will last an hour.

Looking Back

McConnell's Irish Whisky is a name rooted deep in the duchas of Belfast. The brand traces its lineage back to 1776, when the McConnell family first began distilling in the city, making it one of Ireland's oldest whiskey heritages. That the name has returned to Belfast — not just as a bottling operation but as a fully operational distillery and visitor attraction — carries real weight. Walking into the building for the first time during BWW2024 felt less like a tourist activity and more like a homecoming.

The distillery itself, only having opened its doors a matter of months before the festival, still carried that electric feeling of newness — gleaming copper, fresh timber, the warm perfume of new spirit drifting through spaces that have been waiting years, perhaps generations, for this purpose again. Guides led small groups through the distilling process with the kind of confident enthusiasm that only comes from genuine pride in what's been built. Questions were welcomed; no one was made to feel a novice, and no one was left bored. The tir of Belfast — its grit, its reinvention — seemed baked into every beam of the place.

At a duration of around an hour and priced at £25, the tour struck a fair balance between depth and accessibility. It wasn't a whistle-stop tick-box exercise, but neither did it assume encyclopaedic knowledge. Attendees learned about the mashing, fermentation and distillation happening within the very walls around them, and finished with a tasting that gave proper context to McConnell's signature style — smooth, approachable, and unmistakably Irish in character. Sláinte, indeed. This was one of several distillery experiences available during BWW2024; those who wanted a different perspective on Belfast's growing whiskey scene could also explore the Titanic Distillers Signature Tour, just across the city.

What made MT21A particularly memorable was its timing within the wider festival. By mid-July, BWW2024 was well into its stride, and attendees arriving at McConnell's brought with them a few days' worth of curiosity and conversation. The distillery felt like a destination rather than a detour — a few minutes' walk from the city centre, yet entirely its own world once you stepped inside. For those who'd joined previous McConnell's tours in earlier festival years, it was instructive to see how the brand's physical home had evolved; and for first-timers, there was simply the pleasure of discovery. You can explore more of what McConnell's has offered across Belfast Whiskey Week through events like the MT20A Signature Distillery Tour and the MT19B Signature Distillery Tour, which give a sense of how the festival's relationship with this brand has deepened over the years.

If BWW2024 reminded us of anything, it's that Belfast's whiskey story is not merely being written — it is being distilled, drop by careful drop, in buildings like this one. McConnell's has earned its place back in the city's seanchas, and this tour was, for everyone lucky enough to attend, a genuine privilege.