Cormac MacConnell: Smooth but fiery taste from a different era

In a friendly farmhouse in Tipperary last week, I was offered a shot of poitín, largely because the farmer is a reader of this paper, and enjoys most of the bits I write here.

You are a mad hoor, is the way he put it, but there is a bit of craic in you, and I enjoy that.

So we touched glasses, and drank, and not alone was it absolutely illicitly gorgeous, it also brought me back to the first time I tasted the Mountain Dew, more than a half century ago now.