Two peated blends, one at $63 and one at $102

The multi-regional blend desk is where Scotch stops naming a single glen and starts marrying whiskies from all over the country into one bottle. It is a broad room, priced from the low fifties into the mid-hundreds, and the middle of it sits around a median of $79. Most of what lands there this week is honest enough. A handful of bottles, though, carry a good deal more than their nearest peers do, and the gaps do not sort themselves by taste. They sort by name and by format. Which is exactly the thing a label is built to hide from you.

Start with the loudest of them. Compass Box makes The Peat Monster as a blended malt, and it drinks like one sanded smooth: peat carrying the whole thing, then vanilla and caramel underneath, a bit of spice, a run of butterscotch on the finish. It is a well-built dram and nobody serious argues otherwise. But it asks $102, and its peers sit around a median of $58. That is $45 above the middle of its room, close to 78% more, and it is the widest gap the desk turns up this week. You are paying for the maker's name and the story attached to it. The peat is real. So is the premium, and the premium is the part you can decline.

Set that against For Peat's Sake, which is doing much the same job for far less noise. Vanilla and oak, caramel and honey, a little spice and fruit, and a peat signature that is present rather than dominant. It asks $63 against a peer median of $58 — $5 over, about 9%, the tightest gap of anything featured here. Same broad idea, smoke folded into a sweeter blend, and it is priced as if the label were not trying to sell you the smoke twice. If what you want is a peated blend to pour on a weeknight and not think about, this is the one that leaves money in your pocket.

The other big gap belongs to Grant's Triple Wood, and it is a different kind of story. Grant's is a supermarket staple, an everyday blend, all vanilla and oak and malty sweetness with a touch of sherry sitting behind it. The bottle featured here is the 1.125-litre format — the big pour, the one that usually earns its keep on price per drink. Except this one asks $91, and blends in its class sit around a median of $52. That is $40 clear of the peer middle, roughly 78%. A litre-plus bottle of an everyday blend priced like a small bottle of something with a reputation is worth a second look at the tag before it goes in the trolley.

Not everything here runs hot. Dewar's 15 Year Old shows what the honest middle of this shelf looks like: caramel and oak, spice and vanilla, a green apple lift and a wisp of smoke, at $80 against a peer median of $66. That is $15 over, about 23%, real but ordinary for a 15-year-old blend, and the age statement is doing visible work. Cutty Sark Original is gentler again, a light and fruity pour, pear and honey and a soft orchard sweetness, at $59 against $49 for its peers. Ten dollars and about 21% over the middle, which for a bottle you would happily keep for highballs and long drinks is close enough to fair to wave through. And Compass Box's Glasgow Blend, the maker's less feral effort, all vanilla, honey and caramel with a coastal, faintly metallic edge, sits at $90 against a $76 peer median, $15 and around 20% over. Dearer than the room, but nowhere near the reach of its stablemate.

So here is how to spend on this shelf. If you want smoke in a blend and you want value with it, For Peat's Sake at $63 is the clear call — near enough to its peers that you are paying for the whisky, not the packaging. If you have the budget and you specifically want the Compass Box build quality, Glasgow Blend at $90 is the saner of the two Compass Box bottles by a distance; The Peat Monster at $102 is a lovely dram carrying the steepest markup on the desk, and only worth it if the name is part of what you are buying. For an everyday pour with an age statement behind it, Dewar's 15 at $80 is honest for what it is. Cutty Sark at $59 is the easy, unfussy fruity blend for mixing and for guests. And Grant's Triple Wood in the big 1.125-litre bottle is the one to check the shelf tag on: at $91 it is priced well clear of the everyday blends it competes with, and the format is not buying you the discount you would expect.

Prices are from the 6 August 2026 Dan Murphy's catalogue harvest, quoted here at the whole dollar; that harvest carries no stock codes, so none of these tags was re-checked in a shop before writing — confirm the price on the shelf before you commit to any of them. The 360° prices behind the peer medians come from the current model vintage, which reads each bottle against its ten closest peers across the whole shelf. A peer median is a statistic drawn from those neighbouring prices, not a tag on any one bottle. One shelf, one retailer, one week: read the gaps as where a bottle sits against its room right now, not as a claim about which way any price is heading.