No one likes to pay taxes, especially distillers. And in the early days, when the government first started reaching into the pockets of farmer-distillers in Ireland, they put a serious face on tax avoidance. Yet distillers found creative ways to avoid these taxes.

It's time to take a deep dive into how Ireland ended up with whiskey taxes and the growing pains and wars that led to more and more government intrusion into the still house.