The folks at Empirical spirits don't like making things easy for themselves. To make the Charlene McGee blend, they smoked juniper over juniper wood and then lightly crushed it, before making a single botanical gin-like eau de vie using their inhouse koji spirit. This then went into ex-oloroso sherry casks, producing a little bit of colour and a touch of raisiny sweetness. Unlike anything else we've tried and unique.