Illinois Governor JB Pritzker made a bold declaration on Twitter in the leadup to the DNC: “Excited to announce Malört as the unofficial shot of the Democratic National Convention.” In the tweet, Pritzker shared a brief clip of his interview with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, in which he extolled the virtues of this liqueur well-known to Chicagoans. “You come to Chicago, you have to have a shot of Malört,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s the best-tasting liqueur, I’m just saying it’s the one that if you want to prove your mettle you’ve got to have a short of Malört.” Then they each threw back a shot.
Impressively, Psaki, a former White House press secretary, did not grimace. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she gagged.
As a native of Chicago, let me assure you that to describe Malört as “not the best-tasting liqueur” is the kind of understatement only a politician could make. Malört is probably—no, scratch that, definitely—the worst-tasting beverage an American can drink. Food & Wine described it as “citrus-flavored gasoline.” That is accurate, though I’ve always imagined Malört as having the flavor of liquid ear wax.
So how did this foul booze become not only the unofficial shot of the DNC—according to Crain’s Chicago Business, DNC partygoers are throwing back their fair share (not, however, Senator Chuck Schumer); Nisei Lounge, a bar near Wrigley Field, is serving Malört with blue-cheese olives this week—but also the most beloved drink of the nation’s third-largest city? As one esteemed food writer told me, “I don’t understand it, but I’m not meant to, since I’m not from Chicago.” I will try to explain.
The drink tells the story of a great American metropolis. It’s all there, in a one-and-half-ounce shot glass.
It started with a guy named Carl Jeppson, who immigrated to Chicago from Sweden in the late 1800s and brought with him a recipe for a wormwood-based drink. According to Chicago magazine, Jeppson made and bottled the liqueur and named it after the Swedish word for wormwood: Malört. Early on, the acrid taste benefitted Jeppson’s business practice. During the prohibition era, he marketed his concoction as medicine so he could sell it legally. Malort promised to “rid its imbibers of stomach worms and other parasites in the body.” When Chicago cops questioned Jeppson about the intoxicating liquid, he served them shots as a way to prove his truth in advertising, Food & Wine reported. “They would agree,” the magazine said, “that what he was selling was not a recreational good.”
That story is likely apocryphal, but it comes from Sam Mechling, the marketing director of the company that now sells the liqueur: Jeppson’s Malört. The company started in 1934 after Jeppson sold his booze to a guy named George Bode. Eventually, it fell into relative obscurity and production moved to Florida.
In the early 2000s, Mechling—who wasn’t with Jeppson’s at the time—was sharing funny tweets and Instagram posts about Malört. As Food & Wine described it, Malört became a meme drink before people were using the word meme. Soon, Mechling began selling unlicensed merch. The then-owner of Jeppson’s, Patricia Gabelick, who was Brode’s secretary before he died in 1999, threatened to sue Mechling, then she changed her mind and in 20212 hired him. I knew none of this backstory when I was living in Chicago, but Malört was in my life long before it became a local social-media sensation. Most nights out in Chicago began or ended—often both—with a shot of Malört.
As its notoriety and sales spiked in Chicago, Gabelick sought to trademark the name, insisting Jeppson’s was the only company that could call this particular liqueur Malört. In 2014, Chicago magazine reported, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the request, which means the true and only Malört is the one made by Jeppson’s. The Chicago-based CH Distillery bought Jeppson’s in 2018 and returned the production of Malört to its home.
I have consumed more shots of Malört than I can count. As a former Chicagoan, I practically had no choice. The best way to take it is with an Old Style, a Miller High-Life, or a Pabst Blue Ribbon, in that order. Right now, I have two bottles of Malört at my home bar in New Jersey. I drink it on two occasions: when I’m feeling very nostalgic for the Windy City and when guests come over, we’ve already had too much to drink, and I get the bright idea to serve them Malört shots. They twist their face in pain and occasionally gag, proving, as Governor Pritzker suggested, their mettle.
Did Carl Jeppson actually enjoy the stuff he brought to Chicago? Apparently, so. In the Food & Wine story, Mechling claimed that Jeppson killed his tastebuds by constantly smoking cigars. He could, however, taste Malört.
There is a novelty to Malört. Some bartenders have found ingenious ways to incorporate the liqueur into cocktails. A Chicago-based coffee company, Dark Matter, has a Malört-infused canned coffee drink. It’s pretty good, mostly because you can’t taste the Malört.
But it’s incorrect to reduce Malört to a mere party trick. The drink tells the story of a great American metropolis: a city shaped by its immigrant population and its proximity to crime, graft, and industry. Like Malört, Chicago has constantly reinvented itself, from the hog butcher to the world to the home of gastronomical cooking. It’s all there, in a one-and-half-ounce shot glass. And as for the wretched taste—I don’t care what anyone says, no one acquires the taste for Malört—it is, at least, unique. In a world of deep fakes and AI-generated content, it’s nice to have something as real as Malört.
In his 1951 essay, “Chicago: City on the Make,” Nelson Algren wrote: “Once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.“
He could’ve been talking about Malört.
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