1/The dearest ticket on Japan's shelf right now is $730. Across all twenty-four bottles, the jury's average verdict lands at $154. So the top of this shelf sits nearly five times what the consensus pays, on average, for anything here.
2/Coverage first: twenty-four members, all twenty-four priced live in the 10 Sep check. Nothing carried, nothing skipped. What follows is the aggregate's stored top and bottom cut, ranked by each bottle's premium over its own CE 360° mean.
3/Hot means closest to that mean, not cheap. Tenjaku sits tightest of the lot — $92, only 1.2% over its own jury. Japanese, blended, an easy pour. As near fair value as this shelf gets.
4/The Chita next: $100, 3.3% over its mean. Then Mars Iwai Bourbon Barrel — $108, 4.4% over. Both a hair above where the consensus lands them. Modest premiums, no drama.
5/The cold end is where it gets interesting. Kurayoshi The Tottori carries the widest premium of all, 34% over its mean, yet the ticket is $97. Here's the bit that surprised me: the cheapest bottle in this cut is also the one furthest above its own jury.
6/That's the reading trap. A 34% premium on a $97 bottle means the jury rates it low, near $64, not that it's dear in dollars. Contrast Yamazaki 12: $359, 34% over its mean too — but genuinely a dear ticket AND above consensus. Same gap, different stories.
7/Rounding out the cold end: Hakushu 12 at $348, 31% over. Shinobu Pure Malt 10 Year Old, $198, 23% over. Yamazaki Distiller's Reserve, $185, 21% over. The single malts and the older statements carry the load here.
8/So: a full shelf, twenty-four of twenty-four. The tightest to fair value is the cheap blend; the widest premium is a cheaper bottle its jury doesn't rate. Read the gap, not the price tag — they point different ways on Japanese whisky.
| Rank | Item | Price | ce_gap_pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (hottest) | Tenjaku Blended Japanese Whisky 700mL | $92 | 1.21% |
| 2 | The Chita Japanese Whisky 700mL | $100 | 3.33% |
| 3 | Mars Iwai Bourbon Barrel Whisky 750mL | $108 | 4.39% |
| (4) | The Shinobu Blended Japanese Whisky 700mL | $110 | 4.51% |
| (5) | Tokinoka Japanese Whisky 500mL | $95 | 4.68% |
| Rank | Item | Price | ce_gap_pct |
| --- | --- | ---: | ---: |
| 1 (coldest) | Kurayoshi The Tottori Blended Japanese Whisky 700mL | $97 | 34.27% |
| 2 | Suntory Whisky Yamazaki 12 Years Old Single Malt Japanese Whisky 700mL | $359 | 33.61% |
| 3 | Hakushu 12 Year Old Whisky 700mL | $348 | 30.87% |
| (4) | The Shinobu Pure Malt 10 Year Old Japanese Whisky 700mL | $198 | 22.79% |
| (5) | Yamazaki Distiller's Reserve Whisky 700mL | $185 | 21.14% |
coverage.carried_ids is empty, all 24 observed live. Nothing excluded or under-covered.words only (parent-relative, 20 reviews pooled), not per-item notes, so none are attributed to individual bottles.price_band.max is a shelf figure; that bottle's own CE 360° mean and gap are not in the stored top/bottom cut, so the opening compares the shelf max only to the shelf-average mean.None recorded.
Whole Shelf, scope Japan (country), vintage 2026-09-10.r (pack country-japan-aggregate.json). Gap basis: percentage — read from the aggregate as stored (aggregate_rollup's rule: max/min price ratio >= 2 reads as percentage, else dollar; this scope's range is $69.95-$730.00). Coverage: 24 of 24 members priced live in the 2026-09-10 harvest (100%). Notable movers are the aggregate's stored top/bottom cut, not the full ranked shelf — the sidecar does not store every member's gap; Sources holds that stored cut. ce_gap_pct = (price - ce_360_mean) / price x 100, the item's premium over its own CE 360 degree consensus. 'Hot' = smallest premium, 'cold' = largest. No hot item here sits below consensus: 'hot' means closest to fair value, NOT a bargain or a discount. Hot/cold are value-signal labels only — never sales velocity, popularity, or trend.
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