Poitín is the original Irish craft spirit dating back to approximately 584 AD. Although outlawed in 1661, the drink was popular across Ireland until the 1960s when its popularity waned. The production of poitín was a secretive affair but people would know where to find the good stuff.
A newspaper article from 1943, paints a very poetic image of how the illicit liquor came to be.
Many hundreds of years ago, on the side of some Irish glen, a field of barley ripened in the sun, the ears of grain swelled and matured, and later they were ground and prepared for fermentation. The fermented grains were steeped and boiled.
The ingenious grower of that barley must have been a bit of a chemist. Maybe he arranged for the resulting steam to be trapped and condensed, maybe by some lucky chance, it passed over some cold surface and condensed itself. Anyhow, here was a liquid as cold and clear as the mountain air.
Making of the Mountain Dew
Quality poitín had everything to do with the production from how the brewer built his still to how he soaked his barley. First, the brewer would create and ferment a wash before beginning distillation. A turf fire provided the heat and often wild and windy hillsides provided the location for a still. This stopped the Gardaí following the smoke plumes. The brewer then attended the still for several days.
The newspaper article continued:
The change comes. A great wave surges through him, bulging his muscles, throbbing in his temples. He hastens with swift, though uncertain steps to spread the news. Uisgebeatha he called it in his native Gaelic – the water of life. Later he shortened the name to uisge (or whisky), which only means water, and didn’t really apply until the present day.
Original style poitín came from a malted barley base, the same as a single-malt or pure pot still Irish whiskey. In the later 20th, an increase in the price of barley lead to experimentation with other bases and a loss of quality in the product.
Maybe more than others in Northern Ireland, the illicit pot-still brewers felt the pains of sugar rationing. On 16th December 1942, the Belfast Telegraph reported on the problem under the headline “The Poteen Pimpernels Have Joined The War Casualties’. According to the article, sugar, starch, and saccharine were much in demand for “more useful purposes”.
The illicit distilling continued across Ireland throughout World War Two. Newspapers regularly contained warning stories of heavy fines and punishments handed out to those caught in possession of the brew or equipment. Of course, there were many cases of quick thinking Irish men and women claiming they had the poitín to cure all sorts of ailments from eczema, to asthma, to sick cows.
On Saturday 16th December 1939, in the quiet days of what became known as the phoney war, the Belfast Telegraph contained an anecdote entitled “The Goat That Drank The Poteen” but that’s a story for another night…