About
Belfast's first legal whiskey distillery in 88 years, located in the historic Thompson Dock Pumphouse in the Titanic Quarter. Founded by Peter Lavery, a former bus driver who won the lottery. Three Forsyths copper stills: 2,500L wash still, 1,500L intermediate still, 1,000L spirit still. Six 2,500L washbacks. First distillation December 2023 under head distiller Damien Rafferty. Nearly 8 million GBP investment. 17,000 visitors in first year.
Production Details
The Titanic Distillers Tale
The Lagan River curves through Belfast like a question mark, and at its bend sits the Thompson Dock Pumphouse, where the great ships once took their first breath of steam. Here, in the shadow of the Harland and Wolff cranes, Peter Lavery has answered a different calling than the one that first brought him fortune.
A bus driver turned millionaire by lottery's grace, Lavery looked across Belfast's Titanic Quarter in 2023 and saw what the city had been missing for eighty-eight years: the gentle breath of whiskey stills. The last legal distillery had fallen silent in 1935, leaving Belfast's ancient thirst to be quenched by distant counties.
Inside the Victorian pumphouse, where once great engines pushed water through iron arteries, three Forsyths copper stills now perform their own circulation. The 2,500-liter wash still stands tallest, feeding its vapors to the 1,500-liter intermediate—for this is Irish whiskey, demanding its triple passage through copper. The smallest still, just 1,000 liters, captures the final spirit, each vessel a deliberate choice in Lavery's eight-million-pound vision.
Head distiller Damien Rafferty struck the first flame in December 2023, the copper singing its ancient song while the Lagan flowed past outside. Six washbacks, each holding 2,500 liters, bubble with the promise of Belfast's return to Ireland's whiskey map. The fermentation vessels stand like sentinels in the converted engine room, where tourists—17,000 in the first year alone—peer through windows at the resurrection of their city's distilling soul.
This is Northern Ireland reclaiming its place in the Irish whiskey renaissance, the triple-distilled uisce beatha flowing again where great ships once dreamed of crossing oceans. The stills work steadily, patient as the river, knowing that Belfast's whiskey will emerge when it's ready, carrying the salt air of the lough and the determination of a city that builds things meant to last.
The copper gleams under industrial lights, and the future tastes of possibility.