Potcheen
Illicit homemade Irish whiskey, distilled from potatoes, grain, or whey, usually in remote rural locations and almost always at illegal strength. Now also produced legally as a branded spirit. The historical product was small-scale, untaxed, and famously variable in quality.
Etymology
From Irish 'poitín', the diminutive of 'pota' (= a pot). Literally 'little pot' - the small distillation pots in which the spirit was illicitly produced. The English spelling 'potcheen' (and the alternative 'poteen') is the anglicised pronunciation. The Irish word, in turn, is one of many small-pot-distillation words across European languages where home distilling has a long history.
In a sentence
"Uncle Jim used to make his own potcheen up the back of the hill - that stuff would have you blind by morning."
Historical notes
Potcheen carried legal weight as well as cultural significance in nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland. The British (and then Irish) state's excise laws made unlicensed distilling a serious offence; the historical product was made in remote locations - bogs, mountain glens, outhouses - by people who could not afford or refused to pay the duty. Quality ranged from fine to dangerous. Modern legal poitín, available since 1989, is a commercial spirit; the word still carries the older illegal romance.
Alternate spellings
poteen · poitín
Sources
- Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla (Ó Dónaill), entry poitín. · dictionary
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry poteen / potcheen n. · dictionary