Malört Was Made for the Shot. Bartenders Are Changing That.
When we asked whether Jeppson’s Malört had gone mainstream in 2024, the answer was something like “almost, but not quite.” Part of Malört’s charm has always been its commitment to being difficult. The spirit, a wormwood-based digestif made by Chicago’s CH Distillery, is famous for its extremely bitter taste, and the classic Chicago handshake (a shot of Malört with an Old Style beer) remains the default delivery mechanism, a rite of passage that has launched a thousand grimacing faces and at least as many creative descriptions of its taste.
Even its notorious bite has become something of a moving target. Since CH Distillery purchased Carl Jeppson Company in 2018 and brought back production of Malört to Chicago from a Florida contract distiller in 2019, drinkers have debated whether the liqueur has gotten less brutal as a result of returning to original maceration techniques, the seasonal variability of CH’s wormwood sourcing in Sweden, or a deliberate effort to broaden the spirit’s appeal.
Either way, Malört had escaped the city’s dives and landed on back bars across the country. As a liqueur whose primary cultural function had long been a novelty shot, the cocktail menu was the last frontier. But for a spirit this layered — botanicals, grapefruit peel, wormwood — a shot may actually be the worst way to drink it.
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New Fröntier
At Charis Listening Bar in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, Alex Jandernoa, the bar’s owner, has required a Malört cocktail on every menu since it opened in early 2025. The bar has cycled through three so far: the Palörtma, a Paloma riff built on lemongrass-infused tequila; an Arnold Palmer variation finished with a black tea-infused Malört float; and a current build that fat-washes the spirit with duck bacon schmaltz before pairing it with elderflower and a wood smoke liqueur. Their bathroom is also fully merchandised by CH Distillery, wallpapered with original advertisements and a timeline of the spirit’s history from its Chicago origins through its Florida exile and back again.
For Jandernoa and beverage director Gina Hoover, none of this is novelty. “There’s nothing more exciting when you’re making a cocktail,” Hoover says, “than taking an ingredient that is aggressive or weird or combative and taming it and making it part of a symphony.”
Katie McCourt was at the Hoxton Hotel in 2024 when she predicted that Malört cocktails would become more of a thing. A year and a half later, she says time has proven her only partly right. “It’s more than it was, on the up still, but not quite where I expected,” she says. Now at Meadowlark (and splitting time at Friends of Friends), McCourt smokes Malört in a meat smoker for a couple of hours — laid out on a sheet pan to maximize surface area — then serves it alongside the original for guests to taste the difference. The smoke, she says, adds a floral note that softens the spirit without hiding it.
The problem, McCourt says, is menu real estate. A Malört listing appeals to a certain kind of person, but many bars don’t have the floor time to guide anyone else through it.
Credit: Kristen Mendiola Media
Taming the Beast
At Punch House, that’s exactly the problem bar manager Jose Garcia-Chow set out to solve, by building guidance into the drink itself.
The Chicago Punch (Malört, elderflower, rosemary peach tea, Mexican cinnamon syrup, and grapefruit, served on draft) was explicitly designed to sand down the spirit’s rougher edges and bring in guests who might otherwise balk. “That was the idea behind it,” Garcia-Chow says, “to create a cocktail that would be an entryway for people.” Admittedly, the punch format helps: The bar’s regulars, he notes, skew toward a crowd not necessarily initiated into Malört culture, which made accessibility the whole point.
Elderflower shows up repeatedly across Malört cocktail menus; Jandernoa says its botanical character acts as a bridge, drawing out the spirit’s herbal notes rather than fighting its bitterness. Citrus, particularly grapefruit, is another natural fit, since Malört already carries that quality on its own. And for the bartenders pushing further (fat-washing it, smoking it), adding texture without masking what’s underneath can make a devotee out of a skeptic — if they’re adventurous enough to try in the first place.
“There’s nothing more exciting when you’re making a cocktail than taking an ingredient that is aggressive or weird or combative and taming it and making it part of a symphony.”
As for who’s actually ordering these drinks when they appear on menus, opinions differ. McCourt is blunt: “Chicagoans,” she says, “or bartenders.” At Charis, meanwhile, Jandernoa says it’s not just industry people reaching for the Malört cocktail — regulars and out-of-towners order it in equal measure.
Credit: Kristen Mendiola Media
Beyond Chicago
Outside Chicago, the picture gets more complicated. Brandon Thrash, director of operations at Middle Child in Philadelphia, has had Malört on the back bar for about eight months, and he’s candid about what moves it. “It’s mostly still Chicago-related,” he says, ordered by people from Chicago visiting friends, or people who’ve been to Chicago and want to put their crew through it.
Thrash appreciates the story more than the spirit itself, and he’ll walk curious guests through it the same way he’d introduce an unfamiliar mezcal. But a Malört cocktail on the menu is a different proposition entirely. Without the cultural context, Philadelphians don’t have the same relationship to it; a Malört listing reads as confusing rather than compelling. “If it’s not appealing to your guests,” he says, “that’s a wasted slot.”
It’s a fair point: While a shot asks drinkers to endure Malört, a cocktail asks them and their bartender to understand it. Sam Wurth came to that understanding the hard way: Tricked into a shot on his first night bartending in Chicago, he nearly quit on the spot. Now he owns Pepp’s Pub in New Orleans, where he runs Malörtigras, a celebration he pitched to Tales of the Cocktail, the annual New Orleans spirits- industry conference, as the deliberate anti-Tales party: Monday afternoon, no pretension, cocktail competition included. The judging criteria are taste, appearance, and overall Malörtiness.
For Wurth, that last criterion matters. He’s watched bartenders get creative — a Ramos Gin Fizz riff, a chai-spiced build, a maple syrup infusion — and he appreciates all of it. The cocktail, he says, is a way to ease someone into a scene, the same way you don’t lead with the most aggressive song or the spiciest dish. But the spirit should never disappear into the drink. “When I make a Malört cocktail,” he says, “I want you to know the damn Malört is in there.”
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