Tamdhu's 12 is the sherry bargain; the rest runs away

Sherry casks are expensive, getting more so every year, and a distillery that leans on them entirely has nowhere cheap to hide. So Tamdhu comes to the shelf dearer than most of Speyside, with a brand median of $232 that sits well above the neighbours. The flavour is the reason to consider paying it: dried fruit and oak, milk chocolate and toffee, an aromatic, faintly spiced richness that is all cask and no shortcut. The question is where along the range that richness stops being worth the outlay, and this week the answer is unusually clear.

There is a reason so few distilleries do what Tamdhu does. First-fill sherry casks are among the most expensive pieces of wood in the industry, the supply is tight, and the price has climbed for years. A distillery that fills nothing else has bet its whole character on one cask type, and the bet shows in the glass. The sherry influence here is deep and even, dried fruit and dark sugar running the length of the whisky rather than a thin gloss brushed on at the finish. It makes for a rich, after-dinner sort of dram, the kind you pour when the meal is done and nobody is driving. Whether that richness is worth the money is the only real question, and the answer changes bottle by bottle as you climb.

The 12 year old is the one to buy, and it is barely a premium at all. On the shelf it is $126, and its ten nearest matches sit at $119, so you are paying about $7 over the going rate, a nudge of six percent. For an all-sherry malt that is close to free. What lands in the glass is the house style in miniature: sweet oak, a curl of chocolate, vanilla and toffee, that aromatic sherry lift on top. It is not the deepest Tamdhu, but it is the one where the price and the whisky agree with each other, and for most drinkers it is all the distillery you need to own.

Step up to the 15 and the sums change fast. It is $202 on the shelf against matches near $132, which is about $70 over them, half as much again. The whisky earns some of that: more time in oak brings darker spice, a denser toffee, a slice of fruitcake that the 12 only hints at. It is on a member offer, too, which takes a real bite out of the gap for anyone with a card. Even so, this is where you start paying a genuine premium for age rather than for a fair day's whisky, and you should go in knowing that is the trade.

Above the 15 the range leaves the ground. The 18 year old, freshly back on the shelf this week, is $274 against matches near $129 — more than double what comparable malts ask. It is a lovely thing, all sherry and oak and soft ripe fruit, aromatic and long, the sort of bottle that rewards a slow evening and a good glass. The Cigar Malt, brand new to this shelf, is dearer still at $290 against matches near $117, close to two and a half times the going rate, a big nutty, chocolatey, pepper-edged sherry bomb built for exactly the occasion its name suggests. Both are real whiskies at real prices for the committed. Neither is a value proposition, and it would be dishonest to dress them up as one.

Here is the shape of the whole desk in a sentence: Tamdhu charges for its casks, the 12 is where that charge is fair, and every step above it asks you to pay more for the barrel than the barrel gives back. That is not a criticism of the liquid. Older all-sherry malt genuinely costs more to put in the bottle, and the quality holds up as you climb. It is a warning about the slope of the price, because the slope here is steeper than at almost any other Speyside name on the shelf.

So buy by appetite and budget together. If you want to know what Tamdhu is and drink it often, the 12 is the bottle, and it is priced like a distillery that wants you to try it. If you love the style and want a deeper, spicier version for the shelf, the 15 will reward you, and a member offer makes it easier to justify. The 18 and the Cigar Malt are for people who already know they want more Tamdhu than the 15 can give and have decided the money is beside the point. Nothing wrong with being that person. Just don't wander into the top of this range expecting the 12's honesty to still be there, because it stops climbing the ladder well before you reach the top rung.