Mountain Dew

No, not the nauseous soft drink that we used to chug during those all-nighters, but its namesake: poteen (Poitín, to be more precise).

It’s not whiskey, exactly. It’s basically what the Irishmen drank when they couldn’t get whiskey…or at least couldn’t be bothered to make it under “official” regulations. Mountain Dew is to whiskey what stout is to lite beer.

Poitín was also very much against the wishes of the English officials, which of course lent it even more of a romantic and political aura.

Among the many songs mentioning or featuring Poitín, the most well-known is likely “The Rare Auld Mountain Dew”, with it’s tongue-twisting chorus and sprightly ode to the beverage. Additionally, the lyrics are excellent at evoking the moonshiners and their surroundings:

There’s a neat little still at the foot of the hill,
where the smoke curls up to the sky
By a whiff of the smell you can plainly tell,
that there’s poitín brewin’ nearby!

By the way, that smoke was from the burning turf (perhaps even the storied peat) that fired the still, and was a dead giveaway to the authorities. So moonshiners would most often aim for dark and windy days…hopefully a few in a row, for it took more than one to brew the Mountain Dew.

On an editorial note, no Poitín that I’ve consumed quite inspires me to sing its praises; perhaps I’ve not had the “finer stuff”, and perhaps I’m not the drinker that my forebears were. Nevertheless, it strikes me as something that should never be taken internally…unless you’ve swallowed something that you need to kill before it erupts through your ribcage, Alien-style…