Most Chicagoans who’ve stepped foot in a bar are familiar with wormwood-flavored spirit Jeppson’s Malört. In recent years the rest of the country has had the pleasure of making its bracing acquaintance.
Beer writer and author Josh Noel’s new book sets out to do the impossible: make you feel grateful if you’ve ever taken a shot of Jeppson’s Malört, and make you feel left out if you haven’t. Against the odds, it succeeds.
Malört origins are Swedish, but it came to life stateside in Chicago. There, a spirits company called Bielzoff Products began making Malört in 1934 to satisfy demands of immigrant Swedes. It clung to life in dusty obscurity for decades thereafter, until enjoying an out-of-nowhere renaissance in the early 2000s. Cocktail bartenders began extolling its virtues, such as they are, and a shot of it soon became a Chicago rite of passage.
It’s a drink that claims to be as reviled as it is beloved, though really, its dirty secret is this: It’s not that bad. Its potent bitterness and citrus astringency and an herbaceous wallop are singular—a digestif on steroids, but still something that will settle rather than upset your stomach. Despite its cult following, Malört’s backstory has always been the stuff of speculation or rumor. Noel’s Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit sets the record straight.
And what an incredible record it is. Malört has survived by the skin of its teeth decade after decade, narrowly dodging certain death only to win another unsuspecting convert. Which is why, if you’ve ever drank it, you should thank your lucky stars to exist in the same universe as Malört. Read Noel’s book, and you’ll develop an even deeper appreciation.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BA: Malört has been argued over and written about for decades. What parts of its story did you feel hadn't yet been brought to light?
JN: Almost all of it really. There's been endless chatter and discussion and debate and lamentation around it. But as far as how it sort of got to be what it became, virtually none of that was understood publicly. Even privately. Connecting the dots required really hunting down some people from the past.
BA: You write that Malört makes poets of regular people. What was your favorite description of Malört that you uncovered?
JN: My favorite slogan is “Malört: Kick your mouth in the balls.”
BA: The communal, sensory experience of describing flavors aloud isn’t something Americans do often. It’s interesting that something sort of repulsive brings that out of people.
JN: Malört hits this intersection of jarring and at least somewhat off-putting, but also accessible and understandable and allows people to grapple with it. I think it’s not as bad as the lore indicates. If it was fishy or rancid, those are some really disgusting off-flavors that Malört is not. It’s just bitter and really astringent. It has a really bold point of view, but people can understand bitter and astringent, and I think that allows them to engage with it.
BA: This story touches on many larger cocktail storylines, like the consolidation of spirits production, the rise of craft cocktail culture, social media's influence on hospitality. Did any of those themes have an outsized importance on Malört’s rise?
JN: Malört really shouldn't exist—it just existed for decades as an afterthought. And then how we all thought about what we ate and drank changed. Social media played a small but really, really important role, because we were able to talk about what we ate and drank in a new way. Connecting those dots was maybe the most important part of the book.
Malört started to thrive in about 2008, 2009. How did we eat and drink then versus how we ate and drank a decade earlier? That conversation allowed me to place Malört in a greater context.
BA: There are so many moments when the wrong person or decision could have squandered the authentic goodwill Malört had built, and that never happened. How did no one fuck it up?
JN: No one ever took it seriously enough to try to screw it up. And Pat [Gabelick], in a sense, was really the perfect owner [at the time] Malört caught fire, because someone more opportunistic might have screwed things up. Pat was as unopportunistic as they came. She didn't even believe anything was happening with Malört. She couldn't fathom it. She was in some ways the last to know.
Her conservative nature made her the perfect owner to let Malört continue being the authentic thing that it was. [Ed. note: Chicago-based CH Distillery acquired Jeppson’s Malört from Gabelick in 2018.]
BA: What is your opinion of Malört as a cocktail ingredient?
JN: Oh, I love it. If you like the bitterness and sort of that grapefruit pith note, I think it can work really, really well. Obviously a little bit goes a long way.