Transportation Whiskey Tasting | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 20 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/468

There are journeys that define a dram, and few stories carry as much weight — or as much distance — as the one behind Transportation Whiskey. On a warm July evening in 2024, Belfast Whiskey Week welcomed back its Tasmanian friends to the snug, storied interior of the Duke of York on Commercial Court, for the second of two sessions shining a light on the island's remarkable whiskey renaissance. Alongside Killara and Launceston, Transportation Whiskey helped fill one of the Cathedral Quarter's finest rooms with the kind of curious, generous spirit that makes Belfast Whiskey Week what it is.

About This Event

We Welcome back our friends from Tasmania! We are delighted that they have flown halfway round the world to get involved in Belfast Whiskey Week - Let's get out and support them this year! In this second session, you get the opportunity to sample whiskey from Transportation Whiskey, Killara & Launceston in the Historic and ever popular bar for whiskey drinkers - The Duke of York!

Looking Back

There's something quietly fitting about a whiskey called Transportation finding its way to Belfast. The name carries history — the convict ships, the forced departures, the unlikely new beginnings at the far edge of the world — and yet what arrives in the glass is anything but bleak. Transportation Whiskey is a Tasmanian single pot still expression, triple distilled and built deliberately on Irish whiskey tradition. Australian in provenance, Irish in method and soul, it speaks to a duchas — a sense of inherited belonging — that resonated deeply in a city that understands, more than most, what it means to carry old roots into new ground.

The Duke of York was the ideal tir for this session. One of Belfast's most beloved whiskey bars, its walls have absorbed decades of conversation, argument, laughter and the slow appreciation of a good pour. The low lighting and layered character of Commercial Court gave the evening an intimacy that suited the subject matter perfectly. Attendees gathered around tables already well-acquainted with fine Irish uisce beatha, and found themselves in conversation with something altogether unexpected — whiskey that spoke their language, distilled twelve thousand miles away.

The session itself was a straight whiskey tasting in the truest sense: no theatre, no distraction, just three Tasmanian producers presenting their work honestly and with evident pride. Transportation's expression drew particular attention for the way it sat so comfortably alongside its Irish-method pedigree while asserting its own distinct Tasmanian character — the local barley, the cool southern air, the particular patience of a young industry that knows it has something worth waiting for. For those who had already encountered the brand at the BWW 2024 Tasmanian sessions, this second sitting offered a chance to go deeper, to sit longer with the drams and let the seanchas of each distillery settle in properly.

It's worth noting how well the Tasmanian programme has been woven into the fabric of Belfast Whiskey Week over the years. Across tasting sessions, collaborative showcases, and the Tasmanian Whiskey Dinner, these producers have earned their place on the bill not through novelty alone but through consistent quality and a genuine warmth in how they engage with the Belfast audience. That reciprocal welcome — Tasmanian distillers flying halfway round the world, Belfast drinkers leaning forward with genuine interest — is one of the festival's quiet successes. You can explore Transportation Whiskey's full range to get a sense of what made this session so compelling.

For those building a broader picture of the whiskey traditions that converge on Belfast each July, the festival's Whiskey Map offers a useful guide to the distilleries, regions, and stories represented across the week. Transportation, Killara, and Launceston sit on that map as reminders that the Irish whiskey tradition — triple distillation, single pot still, that particular lightness and grain-forward warmth — has travelled further than its originators might ever have imagined. Sláinte to that.