NOTHING like a wee drop of the cratur, as the Hibernians say. That’s cratur as in creature, the term the Irish so often lend the mystical honey-coloured liquid with its inordinate influence over the traffic of men.

Time was when Friday nights saw drinkers at the illustrious Dan O’Connell’s pub in Carlton assaulting their sensibilities with an illegal Chewtown-brewed poteen swigged from flagons smuggled into the bar.

Filthy stuff it was, too. Tasted something like battery acid mixed with penicillin. But it wasn’t the taste we were saluting, it was the bootlegging intrinsic to the Paddies’ tradition of homemade Irish whiskey. Or to be perfectly honest, homemade Irish vodka — since it was made from spuds.

Still whiskey, like poteen, in its many incarnations, holds very dear to the Celts. The great blind Irish musician Turlough O’Carolan wrote Ode to Whiskey for his darling cratur while Scot fiddler Niel Gow penned Farewell to Whiskey, presumably when it all got a bit too much, before recovering to compose Welcome Whiskey Back Again.

Traditional Gaelic tunes and songs run to a theme: Whiskey You’re the Devil, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Nancy Whiskey, Whiskey in the Jar, The Whiskey Hornpipe, The Humours of Whiskey, The Powers of Whiskey, Whiskey Hollow, The Spirits of Whiskey …

It’s fair to say they’re fond of the stuff. And they’re not alone, of course. Whiskey is quite the trend. Flavour of the month, if you like. New distilleries are popping up around the place, usually propped by efforts with gin in the first instance as it’s quicker to make. Some blokes I know like making their own home-brew species.

Geelong muso/luthier Bob Connor is producing his Sandy Gray drop down in Tassie. The Bellarine has The Whiskery beavering away likewise; Ballarat its Kilderkin, too. Timboon down the southwest has been at it for a while now. Another Tassie dram, Sullivans Cove, took out the world’s best whiskey title a couple of years back.

Talk to your bottle-o or whiskey steward and you’ll find Japanese distillations rating very highly among aficionados. Plush hotels now offer whiskey and custom-made chocolate sittings. Yep, it’s a thing. I’m hoping it might offer similar health benefits to the other shiraz-dark chocolate thing.

Of course, for a long time, Geelong was home to the Corio Distillery’s Corio Whiskey as well — producing 12 million gallons a year at one stage. The old Cor-Ten and Coke was a tradition some might remember from their youth.

I seem to recall a bottle of the stuff disappearing one night, and fronting up for work next day fresh as a daisy. Haven’t been able to replicate the feat, though, with the Tullamore Dew crocks and Irish music sessions. Or the Jamesons, Slane, Bushmills or Teeling sessions. Fairly buggered with that ashtray Laphroaig stuff. One of the abiding mysteries of life.

Notwithstanding, brands such as these have inhabited flasks at Murphy clan weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and graveside ruminations for many years now. Been the odd trip down the steps by a wobbly cousin or two at said requiems but that’s part of the tradition.

These flasked mini-volumes have been to the footy, on overseas peregrinations and insinuated within a good many music gigs, too. Which reminds me, Mick Gribben was a generous soul at the Portarlington Celtic Festival upstairs session last year. Much better than the poteen of yore. A repeat performance would be sterling if, ahem, you’re about at the weekend, mate.

Music and whiskey are hardly strangers, of course. Whiskey voice, that raspy croak so beloved in rock, blues and jazz singers, is one of the more positive aspects of the relation. For its normal conversational tone, think Keith Richards.

Whiskey and writing, too. One old story has it that Irish pot still whiskey was so popular that writers wept tears of the stuff when they cracked the affliction of writer’s block. (Fact check: As if the Irish were ever short of a word.)

So it’s good to see whiskey on the up. Especially my Irish whiskey. Fastest growing category of spirits in the world, Uncle Dan Murphy tells me.

Ireland’s distilleries were hammered almost to death about a century back, courtesy of the Irish War of Independence and a British trade ban, and US prohibition. Barely a handful survived, which was a tragedy given that for many people, Irish whiskey was widely deemed across Britain as superior to Scotch.

Might be fighting words but plenty still think the same.

Which is as things should be, even if ‘the creature’ is an old beast with the devil’s cruel streak in him. So your whiskey comes with a warning.

But for all that, the cratur’s generally a fine comrade. As I read somewhere, it who can perform miracles with a man’s soul, send it soaring heavenward at a moment’s notice, to a far better place than most mortals knew existed.

I recommend it on the rocks with a round of Cards Against Humanity. At your peril, of course.