Do Empirical Spirits Serve Any Purpose Beyond Fueling Viral Headlines?

Even from the get-go Empirical seemed like a brand designed to be a viral sensation. One of the earliest articles I can find about the company — then known as Empirical Spirits — is a Medium post written by one of its investors. In “Why This Danish Startup Is My First Official ‘Pre-Seed’ Investment,” J.R. Johnson writes generically of the brand’s “innovative approach” and “intellectual property” and, of course, mentions that co-founders Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen “met while working at the famed restaurant Noma, which has been voted #1 restaurant in the world four times and changed the way the world views Nordic cuisine.”

It’s all very tantalizing, esoteric, somewhat mysterious stuff and it’s no wonder so many people (myself included) were eager to read more about this far-flung company that was making neither whiskey nor gin nor vodka but, instead, “freeform spirits.”

That same month, September 2017, Vice Munchies was perhaps the first alcohol industry publication to write about Empirical in an article titled “This Once-Abandoned Warehouse Might Contain the Future of Booze.”

As a fellow journalist reading these articles, I couldn’t help but wish it was me breaking the news on this exciting, upstart company. As an adventurous drinker, I likewise couldn’t help but wish I could actually get my hands on some of these oddball releases to try them myself. Releases with names like Easy Tiger, infused with Douglas fir; Fallen Pony, produced from quince tea kombucha; and Charlene McGee, smoked on juniper wood and