“It’s like an alcohol punch in the mouth,” he says of Malört’s allure, or agony, or both.Ītkinson has grand plans for his new acquisition.Ĭhau Down: A Chicago Food Diary The Best Pizza Topping That You’ve Probably Never Heard About CH cofounder Tremaine Atkinson is both an admirer of the liquor-he cradled a Malört bottle and proclaimed it “my new baby” during a November visit to CH-and something of a realist. and the Malört brand to CH Distillery, an upstart spirits manufacturer based in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Gabelick’s tenure with Malört has, at long last, come to a close. “I’m a white-wine person,” she says, uncorking a bottle one recent afternoon and setting down a pair of goblets. There was always a bottle in the office, she says, but she steadfastly refused to try so much as a drop. The best and worst sales pitch for Malört might be this: When Pat Gabelick, 75, first got into the Malört business 52 years ago, she took one sniff of the stuff and decided it was not for her, a position she wouldn’t renege on for decades all the same, she kept on selling it. Malört is many things: a Midwestern tradition, a temperance loophole, and a passion project that became a life’s work that could become, maybe, a national phenomenon.Īs far as life’s works go, however, Malört is a funny one, given that the longtime president of Carl Jeppson Co.-which makes one product (Malört) and for much of its recent history had one employee (the president)-doesn’t like it. It tastes like earwax or a hornet’s nest or paint thinner or anger in the words of the back label on the bottle, it is “bitter,” “unusual,” “full-bodied,” and “savored by two-fisted drinkers.” Its following in Chicago has all a cult’s hallmarks: an initiation ritual (see: the Malört face, frequently snarled by visitors who’ve trusted a Chicagoan to order for them), a secret handshake (the so-called Chicago handshake: a shot of Malört and an Old Style), and more than a few tattoos inked across diehards’ flesh. Describing its flavor profile is a favorite parlor game among those who’ve sampled it. It’s compared to absinthe, which shares its wormwood core, and to aquavit, which shares its Scandinavian lineage, but Malört isn’t like anything. This is pretty much the point.įor 85 years, Jeppson’s Malört has been a Chicago institution, one that has remained basically unchanged since Prohibition. A Google search for it will direct you to the term “Malört face,” a query that will lead to a close-up montage of poor souls reacting to their first taste of the amber liquor: eyes closed, noses scrunched, jaws clenched, veins swelling out of foreheads, perhaps a tear trickling down a cheek in horror or disgust. The first thing you should know about Malört is that, well, it’s bad.
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