Empirical Spirits — China Market Entry

When Lars Williams left his role as head of R&D at Noma to start Empirical, he was trying to solve a problem: Noma serves fifty guests a night. Could the extraordinary flavours built through fermentation, extraction, and vacuum distillation belong to more than just those fifty people?

Spirits were his answer — a vessel that could carry flavour beyond the table and into far more hands. Empirical launched in Copenhagen, refused every existing spirits category, and talked only about flavour itself. Whether in Copenhagen or Brooklyn, it has always been an outsider — rebellious, forward-facing.

But what does "Uncategorized" mean in the Chinese market? A spirit whose flavour is extracted from apricot kernels. A canned sparkling cocktail built on fig leaves. These ingredients and processes barely register within the regulatory frameworks and industrial taxonomies of China's food and beverage system.

A brand this avant-garde, this technically complex, this singular in flavour — bringing it into China meant that the first task was not sales. It was translation.

From raw ingredient sourcing to fermentation science, from the logic behind flavour extraction to concrete cocktail applications — we had to absorb Empirical's entire knowledge system, then reorganise it through text, image, and video into a language this market could understand and want to approach. A pop-up space and tasting workshops with Speak Low, one of Shanghai's leading cocktail bars; brand ambassador guest shifts; calendar-driven campaigns and Xiaohongshu seeding — together these formed a complete go-to-market strategy.

The results of this kind of work cannot be measured in units sold. What matters is that among Shanghai's top bars, restaurants, and food-minded drinkers, the seed has been planted. They know Empirical exists. Some already love it. Others are curious. And there is anticipation.