There's no other bottle quite like Jeppson's Malört. Not because it's rare, not because it's expensive, and certainly not because it's easy to drink — but because it is completely, defiantly itself. A Swedish-style bäskbrännvin distilled right here in Chicago, Malört has been confronting drinkers since the 1920s, and it has absolutely zero interest in apologizing for it.
Carl Jeppson, a Swedish immigrant, started producing this spirit during Prohibition — not as a cocktail ingredient or a sipping spirit, but as a medicinal remedy for stomach worms. Federal agents repeatedly ruled that no one would drink Malört for pleasure, which inadvertently gave Jeppson legal cover to keep producing it throughout the 1920s. That backhanded endorsement is essentially the spirit's founding myth, and nothing about the formula has changed since.
Malört is built around wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) — that's literally what the name means in Swedish — infused into a neutral grain base alongside undisclosed bittering agents, then bottled at 70 proof with zero aging, zero filtration, and zero softening. What you get is the full, uncut wormwood experience. No sweetness. No fruit. No mercy.
The flavor profile opens with a sharp grapefruit-pith attack, then moves into medicinal wormwood, burnt rubber, and a finish that lingers longer than you want it to — like a scolding from someone who was right about everything. There is genuinely nothing else on the shelf that tastes like this.
If you live in Chicago, this is a rite of passage. Every local bar keeps a bottle specifically for initiating the uninitiated, and owning one at home puts you in a long, proud tradition of communal suffering. But there's a more serious use case too: a few drops of Malört adds a brutal, distinctive bitterness to cocktails that nothing else replicates. Chicago bartenders have been using it as a precision bitterness bomb for years — the key word being precision. The line between accent and punishment is thin.
Buy this if you want to understand Chicago drinking culture from the inside. Buy it to share with out-of-town guests who think they're adventurous. Buy it because $30 is a very reasonable price for something this singular and this deeply weird.
Malört is traditionally served as a shot with a beer back — specifically something cold and uncomplicated, like a pilsner or a cheap lager. The beer isn't a pairing so much as a rescue operation. The ritual matters: you drink it together, you make the same face, and you have a story. That's the point. This bottle pairs with nothing except good company and low expectations.
Jeppson's Malört is on the shelf at Off Premise, 1128 W Armitage Ave in Lincoln Park, for $30. Pick it up in store. You've been warned — and you should do it anyway.
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