Jeppson's Malört quadruples sales after ads embrace its bitter taste

Drake’s Instagram post cemented Malört’s ‘love to hate it’ marketing strategy

CH Distillery, a Chicago-based distiller that also produces vodka under the CH name, acquired the Malört brand in 2018 when it was selling about 10,000 cases annually, had no dedicated sales team, and conducted little marketing. Chief Executive Officer Tremaine Atkinson said the company initially considered more positive messaging about the spirit, which is made from the weedlike wormwood plant using a Swedish recipe.

“It was a little intimidating, because the passion and the love for Malört was already so well established, and we didn’t want to be the ones who messed that up by doing something slick or phony,” Atkinson said. He said the team brainstormed other ways to talk about Malört.

The decisive moment came in the summer of 2023, when rapper Drake visited Chicago and posted a photo of a bottle of the spirit on Instagram with the caption: “There’s no way Chicago enjoys this…” Atkinson said the company watched the commentary roll in. The overarching theme from Chicagoans, he said, was: “We hate it too, but you just don’t get it.”

“It was so clear to me, we’ve just got to stay on this path of ‘We love to hate it,’” Atkinson said.

The brand leaned into consumer-generated descriptions of the taste. Last year, a campaign called “Malört Tastes Like” featured comparisons such as “fermented back sweat,” “moist dumpster residue,” “liquefied existential dread,” and “octane-fueled Chicago gutter water.” The brand’s Instagram account reposts consumers’ unusual Malört-infused food combinations, including pineapple Jell-O shots made with the spirit and shots paired with Bush’s baked bean juice.

CH Distillery assembled a marketing team fluent in social media. One recent TikTok showed Atkinson trepidatiously tasting a shot of his own product. “It tastes like your grandmother’s closet,” he says in the video. “Like fixing your car with your mouth.” The spoof poked fun at a McDonald’s video in which CEO Chris Kempczinski tried one of the chain’s burgers.

The new “My First Malört” campaign, taglined “You Never Forget Your First Time,” launched in July 2026 and includes bar materials urging customers to share stories of their first Malört shot and to try the spirit if they have not already. The campaign also includes a billboard, a first for the brand under CH Distillery ownership.

“We appeal to a lot of people who have tried Malört before, but this is one to sort of appeal to people who have never tried it, to have their first time,” said Anna Sokratov, director of marketing at Jeppson’s Malört.

CH Distillery declined to disclose current sales figures but said Malört sales had quadrupled since the 2018 acquisition. According to IBISWorld, the brand’s compound annual growth rate over the five years through 2025 was 26%, compared with the overall U.S. distillery industry’s 2.7% growth over the same period. IBISWorld said in a March research report that younger consumers, while drinking less overall, are turning to craft distilleries for locally made options, experimental flavors, and brands they find authentic.

Atkinson described Malört as an experience. “It’s got so many aspects to it that are unrelated to necessarily getting drunk, that I think that’s maybe why the younger generation is attracted to it,” he said.

Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said leaning into the spirit’s famously unpleasant taste is the right strategy, even though many companies might try to make a product more widely palatable.

“There are so many different spirits, and a lot of the brands have big budgets. It can be very tough to break through in that world, and the challenge really is, how do you stand out?” Calkins said. “Malört is wisely focusing on the thing that makes it different, which is that it has a very polarizing taste.”

“This is a brand that also fits perfectly in the world of social media,” he added. “There’s lots of videos out there about people tasting Malört for the first time, and their reactions. There’s something in that that is very colorful.”