Dave Witter

In Kentucky and Tennessee, the clear mountain streams and abundance of hardwoods provide the perfect setting for making bourbon or sour mash. Plentiful sugar cane is the main ingredient for rum in almost all of the Caribbean Islands. In Chicago, it's the city's concentration of ethnic drinkers that still supports a small, but rapidly disappearing industry distilling, blending and distributing liquors.

The three major local brands include Dimitri vodka and gin, distilled and distributed on Chicago's West Side; Jeppsen's Mallort, a bitter Swedish drink made from a wild root; and Pelinkovac, a sweeter, berry-flavored liqeur modeled after the Yugoslavian Slivovitz. ( A fourth brand, Schrank's Hot Cinnamon Schnapps, made by Schrank and Shaw, is also reputed to originate in Chicago.) Although not well recognized throughout much of the Chicago area, Mallort and Pelinkovac have developed a core following in some neighborhoods. "Among the ethnic pockets, Mallort and Pelinkovac sell extremely well," says Brett Pontoni, general manager of Binny's Beverage Depot. "Pelinkovac sells at our Grand Avenue store, [where] the buyers are usually Eastern Europeans from the Balkan states or the former Yugoslavia. Mallort sells better at the store in Des Plaines, where lots of Germans buy it, but it is also being discovered by young, just-out-of-college males."

Mallort labels boast a small picture of the Chicago flag, and a booklet that tells the Jeppsen Mallort story is attached to each bottle. A unique and flavorful drink made from a wild root, the label boasts, "Our liquor is rugged and unrelenting... only one out of forty-nine men will drink Mallort after the first shock glass."

"The company was started after Prohibition by Carl Jeppsen, who brought the recipe for the Mallort over from Sweden," explains Pat Gabelick, who manages the Carl Jeppsen Co. "He started in Andersonville, and went from saloon to saloon with bottles. Somehow the company has lasted as sort of a cult [phenomenon] in blue-collar areas."

After struggling with his first few homemade batches, Jeppsen eventually began distilling the drink at the Red Horse Distillery on the Chicago's South Side. During the 1950s, the company moved its business to Brodre Distilleries on 31st Street. Over the past five years, however, much of the distilling has moved to Florida -- but not at the cost of the company's Chicago pride.

"Our offices, distribution, promotions, manufacturing and packaging are still done in Chicago," Gabelick says. "And we only sell Mallort in the Chicago area, so we are definitely a Chicago product."

Pelinkovac also sells well in Chicago, but this once locally-produced product is most popular in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. In towns like Ely, near the Boundary Waters, Pelinkovac's combination of 70-proof alcohol and slight cinnamon taste make it a standard "gut warmer" in many a snow-capped saloon.

Pelinkovac's label boasts a waitress in traditional Slavic garb holding a tray of glasses. The artwork, with type face and brightly-colored inks right out of a 1950s pulp fiction novel, bills Pelinkovac as a bitter liqueur, or "Tvornica Likera." The same label also reads, "Prepared and Bottled by Mar-Salle Co., Chicago IL." The Mar-Salle Distillery was closed, however, during the late 1960s, and an employee at Judge and Dolph, Pelinkovac's Elk Grove distributor, says the liqeur now comes to Chicago via Western International in Los Angeles, which imports the drink from Yugoslavia and then ships it to Chicago via another company, International Imports in the Midwest.

If you are looking for any of these "made-in-Chicago" libations at a liquor store or local saloon, the most widely distributed are Dimitri vodka and gin. Known for low price and wide availability, Dimitri's motto used to be, "If it wasn't for the price, you'd swear it was Russian." It isn't. Instead, the vodka and gin are made in Chicago's last operating distillery, Union Beverage. Located in a virtual no-man's land on West 35th, surrounded by factories, the Stevenson Expressway and the Chicago Sanitary Canal, the two-by-three-block Union Beverage Warehouse still stands as a forbidding structure, surrounded by barbed-wire fences and blackened windows.

Of course, there is yet another longstanding Chicago beverage tradition still frequently practiced -- distilling liquor at home. A popular custom particularly around the holidays, locals in Chicago's Puerto Rican neighborhoods make homemade rum as gifts friends and neighbors, while the drink of the old time Scandinavians is glug. "You make it by mixing Everclear, brandy, Port, red wine and mulling spices," Pontoni says. "It's just another old-time ethnic liqeur recipe, and usually it isn't half bad."

(10/05/2000)


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