Transportation Whiskey Tasting Session | 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/24/372

There's something quietly remarkable about a whiskey that carries the ghost of Irish tradition to the far end of the earth and then brings it all the way back again. Session 64 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 did exactly that — gathering a room of curious drinkers at the Angel & 2 Bibles to taste their way through three of Tasmania's most compelling distilleries: Killara, Transportation Whiskey, and Launceston. For fifteen pounds and an open mind, it was an evening that covered more ground than most transatlantic flights.

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 sixth session, you get the opportunity to sample whiskey from Killara/Transportation Blend, Belgrove & Launceston in the Fantastic Angel & 2 Bibles.

Looking Back

Tasmania has become something of a recurring character in the Belfast Whiskey Week story, and with good reason. The island's distillers have carved out a reputation built on obsessive craft, cool-climate maturation, and — in the case of Transportation Whiskey in particular — a deeply felt connection to Irish whiskey tradition. When the BWW team announced that Tasmanian producers were flying halfway round the world to take part in 2024's festival, the least the city could do was fill the seats. Session 64 made sure of that.

The Angel & 2 Bibles, tucked into the heart of Belfast, is one of those venues that earns its reputation quietly — through good light, honest pours, and a room that somehow manages to feel both intimate and buzzing at once. It was the right setting for a session that asked attendees to lean forward and pay attention. Three distilleries, three distinct voices, and a shared commitment to making whiskey that belongs somewhere and means something. The tasting format was unhurried, with space to sit with each dram rather than rush through the card.

Transportation Whiskey was a natural centrepiece. A Tasmanian single pot still whiskey, triple distilled and built on Irish whiskey tradition, it sits in a genuinely unusual position — Australian in provenance, Irish in method and spirit. The seanchas behind it is worth knowing: Tasmania's connection to Ireland runs through history's darker corridors, and the name itself carries the weight of that. To taste it alongside Killara and Launceston was to understand that Tasmanian whiskey is not a monolith; each distillery brings its own character, its own tír, its own way of working the still. Transportation has featured prominently across BWW's wider Tasmanian programme — including collaborative showcases at the Belfast Whiskey Expo — and its presence in Session 64 felt less like a guest slot and more like a homecoming of sorts. You can explore their full range at our Transportation Whiskey collection.

For those who like to trace the geography of uisce beatha, it's worth spending time with our Whiskey Map, which puts distilleries like Killara, Belgrove, and Launceston into context alongside the Irish and Scotch producers that have shaped the wider tradition. Seeing Tasmania sit alongside Antrim and Speyside on a single page is a small but telling reminder of how far this craft has travelled. If Session 64 had a thesis, it was something like: whiskey is a living thing, and it goes where people carry it.

Session 64 was £15 well spent — the kind of evening that quietly recalibrates your sense of what whiskey can be and where it can come from. If you're curious about what else BWW 2024 had to offer, the full event page is worth a look. And if the Irish connection in all of this has you thinking about the home tradition, our sessions on the Bushmills Causeway Collection and the history of the Old Bushmills Distillery make for a natural companion journey. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who made it along.