Smuggling Nun creator Maura Clare first read about poitín when she was in her late teens, growing up in the very Irish-American town of Fairfield, Connecticut. She was immediately intrigued. Maura mentioned her curiosity about Ireland’s ancient distilled spirit to her cousin, an Irish Franciscan Nun, who was planning a trip back home. Sister Mary became determined to procure a sample. She not only hunted down the poitín, which was illegal at the time, she smuggled it back to the U.S. in a holy water bottle. 

Years later, when Maura began researching poitín in earnest, a friend of a friend made a quiet introduction to a retired bootlegger-farmer in the Glens of Antrim, whose poitín-making methods originated with the famous Michael McIlhatton.

Over the next seven years, Maura worked to perfect the McIlhatton recipe to capture the distinctive, fresh flavor of Ireland’s best poitín. Smuggling Nun’s County Down distillery went through an extensive process to procure the finest ingredients and scale up the formula for production.

In blind taste tests, the SmugNun consistently ranks as the smoothest, most premium and flavorful of Irish poitíns.