Tried it when I was in Chicago. If you enjoy bitter amari like Cynar or Averna you won't find this particularly especially bracing. It's an interesting local curiosity, but it's sort of _just_ bitter with not much else in terms of flavour.
Even someone who has never had an amaro might enjoy Cynar (artichoke; powerfully vegetal with a sweet finish, refreshing in a lot of the way a slice of cucumber in water is) or Averna (orange and anise, what's not to like?). If you take a sip of Malort and your brain doesn't immediately scream POISON, something is wrong.
Not sure if it’s still around but there was a local bartender there who made his own high quality version of Malört. You could find it at a few distributors around called “franklins malort” but I heard they got a cease letter and then renamed it to “bësk”. Compared to the jepesens was like bud light to a craft brew. Way better balance, still the bitter grapefruit, but also with a ton of other aromatics and spices. That stuff was delicious.
Leatherbee (iirc) made one; they had it at Publican for awhile. Here's the problem: Malort is a Bask, which is its own whole kind of digestif. If you make a Malort-like Bask on purpose, as opposed to finding it in a puddle in the basement and bottling it like Jeppson's did, what you come up with will probably be fine. I remember not hating the Leatherbee stuff (but it was incredibly high ABV and we all got pretty messed up on it).
