Introduction to CH Distillery’s Recent Acquisition
One Memphis-area man’s trash became CH Distillery’s treasure after his neighbor posted a curious inquiry about a decades-old bottle of Malört on Reddit. The Chicago-based distillery, which has exclusively produced the bitter-tasting wormwood spirit Malört since 2019, purchased the bottle from Ben Cissell, a Memphis native, for an undisclosed amount last week. The distillery also made a “large donation” — the exact amount also undisclosed— to a charity of Cissell’s choice: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, headquartered in his hometown.
The Journey of the "Ancient" Bottle
Cissell described feeling “a type of anxiety” as he and his wife, Melissa, made the seven-and-a-half-hour drive to Chicago to hand over the bottle.
This recently discovered “ancient” bottle of Malört displays a label with the name of Mar-Salle Distillery in Chicago, which produced Malört between 1953 and 1986.
Megan Moore/CH Distillery
The Authenticity of the Bottle
“I knew the bottle was in the trunk. I checked it like three times before we left, just to make sure it was there, because my mind will play tricks on me,” he said.
The “ancient” bottle displays a label with the name of Mar-Salle Distillery in Chicago, which produced Malört between 1953 and 1986. The distillery then shut down permanently, and Malört production moved to Kentucky and Florida. It resumed production in Chicago in 2019, a year after CH Distillery purchased the Carl Jeppson Company from Patricia Gabelick, who once worked as the brand’s legal secretary.
Ben and Melissa Cissell with an old bottle of Malort
The Malört Team’s Verdict
The Malört team told the Sun-Times they believe it’s a knockoff bottle, as the name wasn’t trademarked during the time it might’ve been acquired. There’s also no mention of Carl Jeppson on the label. “Additionally, the bottle doesn’t have similar qualities to the older versions we have seen, for example the plastic cap,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said “the plan is to keep the bottle as a part of Malört’s history; real or not, it’s definitely inspired and provides some exciting insight into what was going on back in the 1960s-80s.” It joins another old, mysterious bottle of Malört in the distillery’s possession, and the team is working on identifying the year of production of that bottle too, they said.
The Story Behind the Bottle
Cissell, 47, told the Sun-Times that the bottle he found was in his neighbor’s attic, who’d lived in the home since it was built in the 1970s. According to the spokesperson, Malört wasn’t sold outside of Chicago until 2010, so how it got to Memphis is unclear.
About a year ago, that neighbor moved out of his home on Cissell’s block in the Memphis-adjacent suburb of Bartlett. He’d been coming in and out of the house, clearing it out and fixing it up to sell, when one day he left a variety of items out on the curb for the garbage collector.
Five bottles of liquor caught Cissell’s eye. Among them, the Malört.
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