In Defense Of Malört
Hello and welcome back to the Pictures of Dives Substack! This week my girlfriend @classfrenemy, is taking over the substack to write about Chicago and Jeppson’s Malört
As a born-and-raised Chicagoan who loves to drink, I love when I get The Question. People not from Chicago will lower their voice a little and look around like they’re about to tell me a secret, then ask “ok… but do you really like Malört?”
For those of you not initiated, Jeppson's Malört is a wormwood-based liquor developed by Swedish immigrants to Chicago in the 1930s. It is based off bäsk, so the concept wasn’t invented in Chicago. Although Chicago has a huge population of white ethnics of varying flavors, there aren’t very many Swedes; the city’s love of the liquor is not because immigrants were looking for a taste to remind them of home -- rather, a whole city of Black, Latino, Polish, Irish, and Jewish people all independently fell in love with this bizarre, bitter, Swedish liquor.
I have frequently described the taste of Malört as being “like taking a shot of lighter fluid with a delightful grapefruit aftertaste”, but there is nothing I could say about it that is nearly as funny or as descriptive how the Jeppson’s company describes itself. For years, the label on the bottle read as following:
Most first-time drinkers of Jeppson Malört reject our liquor. Its strong, sharp taste is not for everyone. Our liquor is rugged and unrelenting (even brutal) to the palate. During almost 60 years of American distribution, we found only 1 out of 49 men will drink Jeppson Malört. During the lifetime of our founder, Carl Jeppson was apt to say, 'My Malört is produced for that unique group of drinkers who disdain light flavor or neutral spirits.' It is not possible to forget our two-fisted liquor. The taste just lingers and lasts – seemingly forever. The first shot is hard to swallow! Perservere [sic]. Make it past two 'shock-glasses' and with the third you could be ours... forever.
I have had many more than 3 shots of Malört in my life, so suffice it to say that I am theirs…. forever. But that doesn’t answer the question -- do I like it?
I do, but I can’t explain why. I think a lot about the time several years ago when I purchased 2 bottles of it from a liquor store. Now this is a little weird -- even people who absolutely love it will usually buy one at a time. I was going to a party with a lot of out of town friends so I got two bottles and the cashier raised her eyebrows and asked “what are you doing, like, a prank?” And the true, honest answer is: sort of?
Yeah, Malort is kind of a prank. It is pretty funny to watch someone taste it for the first time and absorb that lighter fluid-grapefruit flavor. But just because that’s funny, just because there is a bit of an ingroup-outgroup dynamic where oldheads get to laugh at the newly initiated, that doesn’t actually mean that the oldheads don’t genuinely enjoy it.
Some of my absolute favorite things about this city are pranks. There is a beautiful statue on the University of Chicago campus, right outside of the old economics building, where Milton Friedman had his office. 364 days of the year it is just an abstract sculpture, but every year on May 1st at high noon, the statue’s shadow forms a hammer and sickle. (Please note that the U of C officially swears up and down that this is not true, or at least that the sculptor didn’t mean for it to happen but, I’ve seen it! I’ve been there at noon on May 1st, and I can confirm that the shadow is a hammer and sickle!). In many ways, reversing the flow of the Chicago River was the world’s most elaborate pranks on St Louis. Maybe setting up a city that’s too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, and our original sewage system flowed right into our drinking water was a prank on all future residents.
Chicago perseveres. It’s what we do. We made the stupid decision to set up a city along a river that would dump all of our sewage into our own drinking water, so we designed new forms of river excavation just to reverse the flow. We made the horrible decision to establish hyper-local city politics, every alderman the mayor of their own ward, and we defeated hyperlocalism through a Rainbow Coalition. We made the awful horrific mistake of electing Rahm Emmanuel, then teachers went on strike twice to humiliate him and save public education. We made the horrible decision to buy a bottle of Malört, and that sweet sweet grapefruit aftertaste saved the evening.
Chicago is a wonderful city full of stupid people. Being a Chicagoan is about learning when to flow in the river of your own mistakes, and when to fight like hell. Perservere [sic]. Make it past two and by the third you could be ours, forever.