# #75 Dave Mulligan - Is Poitín Ireland's Mezcal? History, Production, Brands, Tasting

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-curious-bartender-podcast-7114149/75-dave-mulligan-is-poit-n-ireland-s-mezcal-history-production-brands-tasting
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-curious-bartender-podcast-7114149/75-dave-mulligan-is-poit-n-ireland-s-mezcal-history-production-brands-tasting.md
Podcast: [The Curious Bartender Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-curious-bartender-podcast-7114149)
Published: 2026-04-27T06:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jay--tris/episodes/75-Dave-Mulligan---Is-Poitn-Irelands-Mezcal--History--Production--Brands--Tasting-e3igbi7
Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1040837497.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-curious-bartender-podcast-7114149/episodes/75-dave-mulligan-is-poit-n-ireland-s-mezcal-history-production-brands-tasting
Duration seconds: 5166

## Resource

Dave Mulligan is the owner of Dublin's Bar 1661 and The Sackville Lounge, founder of Bán Poitín, and one of the most committed advocates for Ireland's oldest spirit currently working the floor. Poitín was banned by the British Crown in 1661 and remained illegal for 336 years, surviving in the hills of Connemara and Donegal as both an act of cultural defiance and a working farmer's economy. Now legal, GI-protected, and slowly finding its place on the world's best back bars, the category is at one of the most interesting moments in its history. On the episode we trace the spirit's origins back through the 1500s and earlier, separating monkish folklore from the documentary record. We taste a remarkable bottle from the 1830s that may rewrite some of what we think we know about Irish distillation. And we work through a flight of contemporary expressions including Micil's malted barley poitín, the Micil x Kneecap collaboration finished in Buckfast casks, Killowen's peated Dead & Buried, Bán Poitín itself, a Bán expression finished in cocktail-seasoned casks, and an unlabelled brown-paper-bag illicit bottle from an unnamed distiller ;-) We talk about what 1997 legalisation actually changed, why the 2008 PGI imposed a ten-week barrel limit, and why every poitín we taste sits as a fully resolved spirit in its own right rather than a stop on the way to something else. We also get into the early days of Sibín in Kentish Town, the founding of Bar 1661 and The Sackville Lounge, the Belfast Coffee origin story, and what it would take for poitín to become a serious global spirit category. POITÍN TASTED IN THIS EPISODE In rough order of tasting: ​ Bán Poitín (in the Belfast Coffee at the open, then neat later in the episode) — Dave's own brand. Blended from malted barley, Comber potat…

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