New Book Chronicles the Rise of Malört, Chicago’s Beloved Abomination

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A Malört T-shirt gets lots of attention. In Denver’s hip RiNo district, a posse of bros spotted mine and, pumping fists in the air, shouted out “Malört, Chicago, woof, woof!” A petite young woman noticed the T-shirt in a St. Louis grocery store, and she walked up and whispered, “I love Malört.” Climbing to the top of Moro Rock in California’s Sequoia National Park, wearing my Malört T (of course!), a fellow climber stopped to say, “Malört? Hey, you from Chicago?!”

Malört, the infamously bitter liquor, was first created and sold as a tonic for stomach parasites by Swedish immigrant Carl Jeppson in Chicago, but it’s now becoming nationally known. It’s right up there with deep dish pizza as an original Chicago food that has broken out beyond city limits. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker even announced Malört as the "unofficial shot of the Democratic National Convention" held in Chicago last week, downing a shot with both MSNBC host Jen Psaki and The Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper. 

Last summer, my co-author and I gave close to 40 presentations all over Chicagoland for our book, Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites. Simply mentioning Malört always provoked knowing laughs from local audiences: Malört is, it seems, Chicago’s greatest in-joke.

In a new book, Chicago author and beer journalist Josh Noel chronicles the rise of this notoriously vile sip. In Malört: The Redemption of a Revered & Reviled Spirit, on shelves September 3, Noel focuses on the personalities that have powered this brand since its birth in the 1930s, starting with Jeppson, about whom not a lot is known. George Brode was responsible for buying the Malört brand and carrying it into the last half of the last century, and his devoted secretary and later life partner, Pat Gabelick, took possession of Malört after Brode’s death.

Although Malört was produced in Florida for a while, it’s now back in Chicago, produced at CH Distillery under the guidance of Tremaine Atkinson, who once told us that the "gag joke schtick" is part of the reason behind Malört's following. "But it’s more than that,” he added. “It’s fun," he said, “and I don’t want to lose that. When you hear people’s stories about Malört, there’s always some joy to it, and it's not going to hurt anybody.” Even if it does burn a bit going down. 

I had to ask Noel if Brode – whose advertisements for the spirit played on a goofy machismo – ever actually took the brand seriously.

“He knew it was ‘rugged’ and ‘harsh’ (words he used in his advertising), and as an amateur marketer – because really it was a hobby for him – I think he was smart to lean into that messaging when trying to make Malört appeal to its audience. But I doubt he ever took Malört itself that seriously,” Noel said. “He didn’t even like to drink it. He knew he was working with a polarizing and even absurd product to American palates, and he built his messaging around that.”

Malört sales have risen rapidly in the past decade, so obviously people are attracted to it. But why do people drink it?

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Imp of the Perverse,” dramatizes the theory that humans are sometimes driven to act, perversely, against their own self-interest. Is the imp involved in people’s eagerness to drink something they strongly believe they won’t like?

“There are a lot of answers here,” Noel says. “One is that Malört is actually a palatable form of ‘bad.’ It’s jarringly bitter but not that off-putting. If it was rancid or fishy or even vegetal, I think it would be a different kind of off-putting, one that people would have a harder time embracing, even as a gag, dare, or rite of passage.”

Could Malört have happened in any American city, or was there something about Chicago that made it the right place? 

“I think there’s something very rugged and midwestern about Malört,” Noel says. “Ultimately, our combination of centuries of immigration crossed with a thriving blue-collar population helped make Malört what it became.”

But that doesn’t explain why the acquired taste has become so popular. “I think people love the idea of Malört as much or more than Malört itself. That’s not a slight at all. If anything, it adds to its power,” Noel surmises. “As to why, there are many answers. There’s been a broad shift in how we eat and drink – farmers market shopping, farm-to-table dining, craft beer, cocktail culture, and so on. With that had come an embrace of bolder and more interesting flavors. Enter Malört.”

That shift was also catalyzed by social media, Noel argues. On Instagram, people post photos of others, frequently visitors to Chicago, having their first sip of Malört with the hashtag, #MalörtFace. Search that hashtag, and you’ll see images of surprise, anguish and revulsion – but also laughs.

“We now have the ability to talk about Malört and share the experience of tasting it over vast distances; that helped spread the message well beyond Chicago. Remember that social media was still fairly fresh as Malört’s cultural ascension began in 2008 or so. It was an exciting time to be discovering flavors and to be talking about them,” Noel says.

What also emerges from Noel’s book are the many people we meet along the way – genuinely intriguing, real characters. And the story of Brode and Gabelick is genuinely touching.

“I was never more fascinated during the reporting than by the people and the relationships that kept Malört alive and ultimately allowed it to thrive,” Noel says. “It really shouldn’t have survived as long as it did, but George Brode inexplicably loved Malört and Pat Gabelick loved George, which made her keep it going even when it barely made any sense. The amount of love and care that has gone into Malört over the years – almost always well beyond public view – is really the heart of the story.”

If you’ve lived in Chicago as long as some of us have, you can’t help but feel affection for Chicago-born food inventions like Italian beef, the Chicago hot dog, and Malört. None of these Chicago originals are classy or fancy-pants. They bring to mind Nelson Algren’s famous quote in Chicago: City on the Make that, “…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.”