Ah Malort. As an almost decade-long resident of Chicago, I have a love hate relationship with Malort. I love it with all of my heart - not as much as my fiance but I digress - but I hate to drink it. But it holds a very special place near, and dear to my heart (see: fiance's love of malort). So of course, the moment I knew this book existed I knew I had to read it.

The first section of this book got a bit boring - focused more on the initial owner of Malort a bit more than I cared for. But once it got to Pat's ownership and the more recent rise of Malort, I was invested. I cannot in good conscience give this book five stars because I know the only reason I enjoyed it as much as I did is because I love Malort. If you don't also love Malort, you'll be bored. But if you're invested in this disgusting and cherished spirit, you'll love it.

Thank you to Chicago Review Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

"Malort never changed to please the masses. The masses changed to understand Malort." Any Chicagoan and even non-Chicagoans have heard of Malort. It is the most hard to describe alcohol out there, and a favorite pastime of Chicagoans is to get unsuspecting victims to try Malort. Josh Noel dives into the history of Malort, its unassuming origins, and how Malort represents Chicago and vice versa. This is a great read for any Chicagoan trying to understand the history of Malort. It gives enough history that one can use any factoid as a fun fact on a night out and surprise locals with new information. I know as I've done it. Even for non-Chicagoans, this book has plenty of interest. You learn about the history of beck and Malort, as alcohol, and their background in Sweden. Noel keeps the book light and interesting, and the whole read is incredibly compelling.

Super fun history of a truly... interesting liqueur. Definitely a good read, but the formatting was a bit odd - that might have just been the device I read it on, though, and not really the fault of the book.

Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit is an interesting monograph by Josh Noel on the history, uses, and culture surrounding Jeppson's Malört, a Swedish American alcoholic spirit. Due out 3rd Sept 2024 from the Chicago Review Press, it's 264 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

Taste in cuisine and drink is obviously widely varying, however, Malört is undeniably intensely bitter and has a completely tongue-paralyzing, bizarre flavor at first sip. It's more or less indescribable, however, as the author quips in the introduction: It's been compared to

"a forest fire, if the forest was made of earwax", "burnt vinyl car seat condensation", "hairspray and death" and "pencil shavings and heartbreak".

Nevertheless, the liqueur has persisted and even thrived. It's been available for over a century, and doesn't appear to be going anywhere. This book, pithily written, accessible for non-gastronoms, and humorous, delineates the history, uses, and some of the truly unique folks behind the obsession.

It's a very entertaining read, mostly about George Brode, a lawyer by trade and one-man-crusader for the liqueur which is essentially grain-neutral alcohol (vodka) aged on wormwood, which is an intensely bitter semi-poisonous woody perennial native to Europe/Asia/and North Africa. Along for the ride was his secretary, a Chicago native named Pat Gabelick, who quit 2 weeks after being hired (too much filing) and was convinced to stay by a pay raise and wound up staying 33 years.

The author has a wonderful facility with presenting the history and culture without ever once devolving into dry factual recitations. It's a thoroughly entertaining read.

Five stars. Plucky, funny, and engaging. It would be a great choice for public library acquisition, and a -wonderful- gift for the foodies on the holiday gift list.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Firstly, yes, I have sampled Jeppson’s Malört. Having some familiarity with the singularly bitter liqueur will help enormously before reading Josh Noel’s book; if you haven’t had the let’s-say pleasure, you will rush to do after finishing this breezy history, despite the many, many vivid descriptions of Malört’s taste in its pages. (A personal favorite: “like a hobo’s Band-Aid!”) Noel charts the evolution of Malört from regional ethnic staple to punchline to quirky standard bearer, as the curious elixir becomes caught up in the craft cocktail revolution of the early aughts. He notes that Malört is as much as story of Swedish immigration as a piece of Chicago history, but he focuses almost exclusively on the latter aspects; what we learn about Carl Jeppson, the liqueur’s creator, and its Scandinavian origins is limited to what the Malört company’s staff has unearthed. Ultimately, the book is more a biography of a business than a spirit, recounting decades of personality clashes and personnel decisions. Noel’s affection for the cast is evident in the first-name basis he uses, but some distance and a broader perspective would have lent the book more heft. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

This book is a history of the digestif known as Jeppson's Malört.

To discuss anything related to Malört is fraught, and not just because I had to learn the Unicode for Swedish letters. Malört is a sort magical potion that creates jokes. Immediately after imbibing it, a profane poetry arises as the drinker tries to describe the taste, the experience, of the drink. Indeed, this truth is central to the narrative told here.

The problem, then, is that every review and comment section about this book is going to be flush with tight fives on the stuff. So I guess here's my audition:

Jeppson's, which is either a malört or the Malört™, is a type of besk, a Swedish herbal liquor. Its main ingredient is wormwood, which is the same as in its cousin, absinthe, except the fairy looks like Bill Swerski.

Malört is the headlight fluid of Chicago. It is a hazing ritual enacted with the utmost seriousness. Chicago is notorious about gatekeeping who is or is not a Chicagoan. Malört is the countervailing energy of the City. It is the open membership secret society. No one is from Chicago; you can only let being from Chicago happen to you. Just drink this shot. Quickly.

The book has several levels. Much like the alcohol itself, there are flavors that only hit after its conclusion.

It is a Chicago fairy tale. It is the story of immigrants bringing their own unique cultural contributions and finding a more unique way to express them in the interest of turning a coin. It is the story of people refusing to quit, not out of any conventional emotion like hope or anger but because quitting would be the rational choice. It is the story of turning brash honesty into money and making feeling bad about it into a virtue. In this story, following your bliss manifests into a dream job. Repeatedly.

Like all Chicago stories, it is about gentrification. It is about the creative destruction of business. It is about appropriation, refracting so much that no one is clear on who stole what from whom. It is coolness as a business. It is about selling out, which is odd, because no one in the book sells out. But the dilemmas of the concept of selling out, the question of what is true identity and how best that identity is served is to the core of the book.

Like I said, it is a fairy tale. But it is the dark, ambiguous sort of fairy tale, the after credits shot of Queen Snow looking stale at a state dinner. This is the aspect that gives the book its most Malört-like attribute. It is not the taste that gets you, but the aftertaste that floats around like a lousy lover. That's what gets you. The narrative is a success story. So why do I feel sad?

It is also a great business history. The story here is a case study in how an outsider brand can be successful, including the debates over the core principals and who the business is meant to serve. This is scholarship of the 100+ year arc of a personality-driven business, and how that intersects with the modern business world. There is much to learn in the study here.

There are a number of points of contention about Jeppson's Malört , so when I first picked up the book, I was worried that this would be a piece of access journalism set to follow the party line. And it is, or it does, but I do credit the author for stating opposing views clearly enough that I feel none were slighted. Some may disagree.

And unlike some histories, the story is functionally at its beginning, with the play into national distribution. As much as a book of a hundred years of history, it is a book for the future hundred years to see how it all plays out.

I recommend it to any reader as the sort of real life happy story, with bite, that is far too rare to find. I do not need to recommend it to fans of Chicago history, as they all already have it on order.

My thanks to the author, Josh Noel, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Chicago Review Press, for making the ARC available to me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Chicago Review Press for the ARC.

I first heard of Malort on the YouTube channel How to Drink, when host Greg tried to make a decent mixed drink out of it. I've heard how diagusting it is, but I never knew why it's made that way. It's interesting to hear it's history.Its story is part American Dream/underdog rising, part secret love story, and part warning of the dangers of greed. I liked how well-rounded the research was on the subject; Joel Noel captured the good, the bad, and most everything in between.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6630484099

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/ce4619c9-7bad-41ac-8224-c1083ac19783

Check out this review of Malort: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit on Fable. https://fable.co/review/e7cd7a32-cd8c-4de5-b07f-1ed322818bce/share