Malort’s previous owner, attorney George Brode, hired Gabelick in 1966. At the time, she was responding to an ad for a legal secretary and didn’t know that Brode also owned a liquor business. For decades, Malort was produced at the Mar-Salle distillery on Chicago’s Near North Side. When that distillery closed in the 1980s, Malort production moved to Kentucky for a few years and then to Florida Caribbean Distillers in Auburndale, Fla., where it’s been made ever since.