Producers
Empirical Spirits in Florida, eighteen months in, the case for category-refusing distillates
Costa Spirits has been the Florida distributor for Empirical since late 2024, the Copenhagen distillery from Noma alums Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen. Ayuuk, Soka, The Plum, and the rest of the line have settled into the rooms we expected: cocktail bars that build menus around ingredients, not categories.
Costa Spirits Team
5 min read
November 5, 2024
Empirical Spirits: the Copenhagen distillery built by Lars Williams (former head of R&D at Noma) and Mark Emil Hermansen (Oxford-trained food anthropologist), has been in the Costa Spirits portfolio in Florida since late 2024. A year and a half in, the bottles that bartenders reach for most are the ones we would have bet on at launch: Ayuuk for the smoky-chile slot, The Plum for the marzipan-stone-fruit slot, Soka for the green-apple-cut-grass slot. The line did exactly what we promised it would do.
Flavor first, category last
Empirical doesn't make gin. They don't make whisky. They don't make vodka. They make *flavors*, built ingredient-first, distilled with culinary techniques (vacuum distillation at 41-59°F, koji fermentation, unconventional botanicals) that conventional producers don't use. Their philosophy: if you start from the agave, the apple, or the chili and let *that* drive the process, you end up somewhere category labels can't follow.
The line, in brief
- Ayuuk: a single-chili spirit built around smoked Pasilla Mixe from Oaxaca, aged in Oloroso sherry. Smoky, fruity, savory, alive. Drinks like a mezcal that went to culinary school. - Soka: distilled from sorghum cane juice and syrup: fresh-cut-grass and green-apple aromatics from the juice, autumnal honey and hay from the syrup. American Heartland captured in a Danish bottle. - The Plum, I Suppose: built around plum kernels and marigold petals macerated in koji-based base spirit. Marzipan and floral notes, named after a Robert Frost poem. - Charlene McGee: elegant smoke and complexity from smoked juniper, a love letter to coastal forests. - The Plum, the Basil, and the Tomato: a tribute to Danish summer gardens, with all three components distilled separately and blended.
Why this matters for Florida bars and restaurants
For a bar, Empirical isn't a base, it's a finishing tool. You don't pour Ayuuk like you pour mezcal. You pour it as the smoky-savory layer in a drink that's already half-built. Soka isn't sorghum vodka, it's a green-apple-and-cut-grass note for a daiquiri-shaped serve.
This means Empirical lives on the top shelf in volume terms but the working shelf in usage terms. Bars that take it on carry it because every weekly menu refresh wants one of its bottles in a featured drink.
Where to find it
Empirical is now available across Florida through Costa Spirits. To schedule a tasting, request samples, or order for your account: info@costaspirits.com.