McConnell's Distillery Tour | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 19 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/804

There are moments at Belfast Whiskey Week that feel less like an event and more like a turning point — and the McConnell's Signature Distillery Tour on 19th July 2024 was exactly that. Guests who joined this hour-long tour found themselves among the very first visitors in the world to step inside a fully operational McConnell's Distillery, housed in one of Belfast's most storied buildings just minutes from the city centre. It was, in the truest sense of the word, duchas — a homecoming, and a heritage made tangible.

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 woven deep into the seanchas of Belfast. The brand traces its roots back to 1776, when the McConnell family first began distilling in this city, and its revival in recent years has been one of the most closely watched stories in Irish whiskey. So when the doors of the new distillery and visitor attraction swung open just months before BWW2024, the anticipation was considerable. To offer tours during the festival, while the place still carried the fresh energy of a new beginning, was a generous and quietly bold move.

Attendees who booked the MT19A morning session arrived to find a building that wears its history with confidence. The architecture speaks of Belfast's industrial and commercial golden age, yet the interior has been thoughtfully shaped into a world-class visitor experience. Guides walked guests through the full story — from the brand's eighteenth-century origins, through its long absence, and into its present-day resurrection as a working distillery producing whisky once again on home ground. The storytelling was unhurried and rich, the kind you settle into rather than rush through.

The distillery floor itself drew quiet admiration. Seeing the copper and steel of a working still in a city-centre building is still something of a novelty in Belfast, and for many on the tour it landed with real weight. This wasn't a museum piece or a heritage reconstruction — it was the genuine article, the uisce beatha being made here again after generations away. The guides were knowledgeable without being theatrical, answering questions with the ease of people who genuinely believe in what they're showing you.

At £25 for an hour's tour, this felt like time and money well spent. The session was compact enough to stay focused but generous enough to let the building breathe around you. For visitors who wanted to make a full day of Belfast's whiskey revival, Titanic Distillers were running their own Signature Tour on the same day — and across the week there were further McConnell's tour sessions available for those who missed out on the morning slot. Between these two city distilleries, BWW2024 offered something genuinely remarkable: a living map of Belfast's whiskey renaissance, walkable and real.

Looking back, the MT19A tour stands as one of those BWW moments that will age well in the memory. The city has long had the bones of a great whiskey destination; what McConnell's has done is restore one of its oldest heartbeats. If you're curious about what else was on offer across the festival, our Whiskey Map gives a sense of just how widely the uisce beatha flowed that week. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who made it through the doors.