Full steam ahead?

Last month we took a quick trip to Tuscany. Among the wines we sampled was Sassicaia, the fabled Cabernet blend from Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast. I said that the wine was an “instant sensation,” but an alert reader pointed out that it was only when it was sold commercially, in the late 1960s, that it took the wine world by storm. Before that, it was the private province of its creator, the marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, who began experimenting with Bordeaux grapes in the 1940s. I also said that Tignanello was another superlative Super Tuscan from “the region.” But that same alert reader noted that while the region was Tuscany, Tignanello comes not from Bolgheri but from Chianti, several miles to the East.

It was January in Chicago and the forecast was for heavy snow followed by bitter cold — high time, I thought, for a shot of malört, the most undrinkable beverage on earth. Or so I’d always heard — and therein lies a tale I didn’t expect to tell. Chances are you’ve never heard of malört, formally known as Jeppson’s Malört, Carl Jeppson being the Swedish immigrant who invented the liqueur a century ago. However, it’s legendary in Chicago, where it’s commonly described as a rite of passage. That tells you a lot right there. Lest there be any doubt, readers are invited to search for #malortface on X, formerly known as Twitter, or Instagram or Flickr.