Titanic Distillers Day | Distillery Day | Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

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

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/25/004

On a July Friday that felt made for it, Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 took a coach-load of whiskey lovers out of the city centre and down to the water's edge at Thompson Dock — where Belfast's shipbuilding past and its whiskey future sit side by side in the old Pump House. The Titanic Distillers Day was, by any measure, one of the most distinctive events on the festival calendar: four hours of guided exploration, carefully paired food, and uisce beatha drawn from one of the most storied sites in the whole city.

About This Event

18th July 2025: Leaves from Room 2
Departs Belfast: 15:00pm
Departs Venue: 18:30pm
Duration: 4hrs

Only a few moments from the centre of Belfast, Titanic Distillers is situated in the Old Pump House, part of the famous shipbuilding heritage of the city.

During the bespoke Distiller’s Day, you’ll embark on a delicious journey while sipping our spirits paired with local artisan produce.

An extended tour of Titanic Distillers at Thompson Dock awaits, offering deeper insight into the history and stories of our unique site. One of our expert guides will lead you through the Pumphouse, Distillery, Thompson Graving Dock, and the floating mezzanine distillery floor—culminating in a very special visit to the original Gwynne Pumps, located three levels beneath the distillery.

Our Whiskies and other Titanic Spirits will be showcased alongside carefully selected produce that enhances their flavour profiles and offers a glimpse into our future plans at the dock.

Leave the hustle of the city behind and experience where Belfast’s shipbuilding legacy meets the future of whiskey tourism—right at the heart of Thompson Dock.

Important Information:

This event is strictly for guests aged 18 and over.
Food offerings are fixed and cannot be substituted.
If you have any dietary requirements or allergies, please contact us in advance.
The bus will leave at the scheduled time. Please arrive at Room2 at least 15 minutes before departure, and be ready to leave your venue promptly.
For accessibility enquiries, please get in touch with our team.

Looking Back

The coach left Room2 at three o'clock sharp — and if the departure time felt brisk, it was a reminder that Titanic Distillers Day was never going to be a casual amble. This was a considered, structured experience, designed to give guests something they couldn't get from a standard visit. From the moment the group arrived at Queens Road and stepped into the Pump House, the weight of the place made itself felt. The Titanic Quarter has no shortage of heritage, but there's something particular about a working distillery that has taken root inside a Victorian industrial monument — the smell of new make spirit threading through brickwork that once echoed with the sound of Belfast's great ships being born.

The tour itself went well beyond the expected. Guests moved through the Pumphouse and the distillery floor before stepping out to Thompson Graving Dock — one of the largest dry docks in the world, and a place that induces a genuine hush — before crossing onto the floating mezzanine distillery floor, a feature as quietly remarkable as it sounds. The centrepiece of the deeper tour, though, was the descent to the original Gwynne Pumps, three levels beneath the distillery. To stand in that space, knowing what it once did and what surrounds it now, is to understand something of Belfast's duchas — its inherited character — in a way that no exhibition board can quite replicate.

Throughout the afternoon, Titanic Distillers' whiskies and spirits were poured alongside carefully chosen local artisan produce, each pairing chosen to illuminate something in the liquid rather than simply complement it. The team were generous with their seanchas — the stories behind the site, the decisions made in building the distillery, and the shape of what's still to come at the dock. There was a real sense that guests were being shown work in progress as much as finished product, which gave the whole afternoon an intimacy that larger tastings rarely achieve. It's worth noting that this kind of extended access is the hallmark of the Distillery Day format — if you missed this one, the Titanic Distillers: Taste of the Shipyard event offered a different angle on the same remarkable location.

Titanic Distillers sits at a genuinely interesting moment. Belfast's first working whiskey distillery in almost ninety years, it carries both the weight of that absence and the energy of a project that has found its home with real conviction. The Thompson Dock site isn't just a backdrop — it shapes what the distillery is and what it wants to be. That came through clearly on the day, in the way the guides spoke about it and in the way the whiskey itself seemed to belong there. For those who want to explore the brand further across the festival, the Titanic Distillers Signature Tours offer a more compact introduction, and the full range is available through the BWW Titanic Distillers collection.

At £35, this was excellent value — not because it was cheap, but because it was worth every penny. The Titanic Distillers Day delivered something rarer than a good dram: a genuine sense of place, of tír, of a city's past and present meeting in a glass. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who made it down to the dock on the 18th of July.