McConnell's Distillery Tour – Belfast Whiskey Week 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/24/356

There are moments during Belfast Whiskey Week that feel genuinely historic, and the McConnell's Signature Distillery Tour on 26th July 2024 was undeniably one of them. With the distillery having only opened its doors a matter of months before the festival, those who stepped inside became among the very first people in the world to experience this remarkable new chapter in Belfast's uisce beatha story. At £25 a head for an hour's deep immersion, it was one of the week's most quietly thrilling tickets.

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 brand steeped in duchas — a genuine sense of inherited place and purpose. The original McConnell's distillery was a cornerstone of Belfast's nineteenth-century whiskey trade, and its revival represents something more than commercial ambition. It is a reclamation. To walk through those doors in the summer of 2024 was to feel the weight of that seanchas, that accumulated story, pressing warmly against the newness of freshly fitted copper and reclaimed stone.

The building itself deserves its own paragraph. Situated only a few minutes' walk from Belfast city centre, the distillery occupies one of the city's most architecturally striking historic structures — the kind of place that stops you mid-sentence when you first see it. Inside, the fit-out managed the difficult trick of feeling both contemporary and reverential, respecting the bones of the old while making clear that serious whiskey-making is very much underway. Guests on the Signature Tour were guided through the full production journey, from grain to glass, with the kind of unhurried attention to detail that a brand this proud of its heritage naturally commands.

What made this particular tour stand out — even among the excellent distillery experiences on offer during BWW2024 — was the sense of genuine novelty. This wasn't a well-worn route polished smooth by years of footfall. The guides were telling a story still in the making, and that lent proceedings an energy that no amount of rehearsal could manufacture. Attendees asked questions that hadn't been asked before. Answers were sometimes still being written. It was, in the best possible sense, a living thing. Those who also caught the Titanic Distillers Signature Tour during the same week will have noticed an interesting contrast — two very different expressions of Belfast's whiskey renaissance, each with its own tír, its own sense of belonging to a particular corner of this city.

The tasting component — always the moment of truth — did not disappoint. McConnell's current expressions are crafted with a clarity of intent that reflects the brand's determination to honour the original whiskey's character while speaking to a modern palate. There were nods to that classic Irish triple-distilled smoothness, but also a depth and a directness that felt very Belfast. Sláinte was said with feeling. For those who wanted to explore the McConnell's story across multiple slots during the week, further tours were available — you can browse the full lineup including MT19B and MT20A to see how demand kept those doors swinging throughout the festival.

Looking back, the McConnell's Signature Distillery Tour at Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 will be remembered as one of those rare early encounters with something that is clearly going to matter. The distillery is open for business, the whiskey is finding its voice, and Belfast has reclaimed another piece of its rightful place on the world whiskey map. If you haven't yet made the short walk from the city centre to see it for yourself, our Whiskey Map will point you in the right direction.