McConnell's Distillery Tour – Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 25 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/068

There are moments during Belfast Whiskey Week that feel genuinely historic, and the McConnell's Signature Distillery Tour on 25th July 2024 was unquestionably one of them. Those who booked into event MT25A found themselves among the very first visitors in the world to walk through the doors of McConnell's newly opened distillery — a building steeped in the duchas of this city's long, proud tradition of distilling uisce beatha. This was not just a tour; it was a homecoming.

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 carries one of the oldest names in Belfast distilling, a brand whose roots stretch back to 1776 on the banks of the Farset. For generations, that legacy lived on in the bottle rather than on the still — but with the opening of this new distillery, the story has returned to where it belongs: to the tír, to the streets of the city, to the hands that make it. Stepping inside just months after the doors opened for the first time, guests at this tour were participating in a chapter that had only just been written.

The Signature Tour itself lasted around an hour and took attendees through one of the most architecturally striking spaces that Belfast's distilling revival has produced. The building sits only a short walk from the City Centre, yet once inside, the noise of the streets gives way to something altogether more considered — copper and oak, the soft humidity of spirit in the air, and the particular quiet that comes with a place that knows exactly what it is. Guides walked guests through the production process with genuine warmth, answering questions with the kind of detail that comes not from a script but from real pride in the craft.

For many on the tour, the tasting element provided the emotional centrepiece. To stand in the distillery itself and raise a glass of McConnell's is a different experience entirely from doing so in a bar or at a festival stand. There is a directness to it — a sense of seanchas, of stories being passed on in the very place they were made. The whisky, as always with McConnell's, is approachable without being simple: smooth, rounded, and carrying that distinctively Irish character that rewards a moment's attention. Sláinte felt earned here.

It is worth noting that this tour ran alongside a number of other distillery experiences during BWW2024. Those who wanted to explore more of Belfast's remarkable new wave of whiskey production could also take in the Titanic Distillers Signature Tour, which offered a very different but equally compelling perspective on where this city's whiskey story is heading. And for those who missed this particular slot, other McConnell's tour sessions were available throughout the week — including the MT19B McConnell's Signature Tour and the MT20A session — a sign of just how much demand there was to get inside these doors.

At £25 a head, this was one of the better-value experiences on the BWW2024 programme. You were not just paying for a dram; you were paying for access to something genuinely new, in a city that has waited a long time to welcome this kind of uisce beatha back into its heart. If the McConnell's distillery continues to develop its visitor experience at the pace it has set so far, it will become one of the essential stops on any serious whiskey itinerary in the north of Ireland. The sheugh between past and present felt narrower here than almost anywhere else during the festival.