Glen Grant's plain 10 is the only one under its peers

This is a light Speyside house, orchard fruit and citrus rather than smoke or sherry, and the model reads all four the same way. So the differences between them are not about style. They are about age, and about what age is allowed to cost. The brand's shelf runs around $111 at the midpoint, from a bottle under a hundred to one over two. Line each one against its ten nearest neighbours and the pattern is almost too tidy: cheap and fair at the bottom, dear and stretched at the top.

Start with the one I'd actually carry home. The Glen Grant 10 is $81, about 6% under the roughly $86 its ten closest peers fetch. It is the only bottle in the range tagged below its company, and it drinks exactly like the house signature: light, soft, honeyed, a little orchard fruit. Nothing shouting. For a ten-year-old single malt under a hundred dollars that undercuts its own neighbourhood, there is not much to argue with. If you want one Glen Grant in the cupboard and you are buying with your head, this is it.

The Arboralis is the no-age-statement sibling, and the sums shift a step. At $77 it is the cheapest tag of the four, but it runs about 7% over the roughly $72 its neighbours cost rather than under. The glass is pleasant and familiar: light again, honey, a soft note of banana, florals. It is a gentler, younger take on the same idea as the 10, and a dollar or two cheaper on the shelf. The difference is where each sits against its own company. The 10 beneath, the Arboralis just above, for near-enough the same money. If you like the house and the tag is all that matters, fine. On value against its peers, the 10 is the better of the two.

Then the age statements, where the price starts to run away from the whisky. The Glen Grant 15 is $149, about 60% over the roughly $93 its ten nearest cost. That is a wide gap for a bottle whose character has not changed much in kind, only in detail: lemon and lemon zest now, grassy, a bit of cake, a thread of heather over the honey. It is a lovely light fifteen-year-old. It is also priced as though the fifteen years were rarer than the model thinks they are. You are paying a steep premium over the room for the age on the label, and whether that is worth it comes down to how much you want those extra years in the glass rather than to any bargain in the number.

The 18 goes further still, and here I will say less, because there is less I can stand on. At $214 it carries about 48% over the roughly $145 of its neighbourhood. No review I trust describes what is actually in the bottle, so I will not invent it. The model reads it as the same orchard-and-citrus Glen Grant profile the rest of the range shares, and that is as far as the data honestly goes. What the numbers do say is clear enough. This is an age-statement tag, priced for someone buying the eighteen years and the box, and it asks close to half again what its company does.

Sit with what the house actually is for a moment. Glen Grant spent decades as the easy Italian favourite, a pale, aperitif-style malt made to be poured young and lightly chilled rather than nosed by candlelight. That is a compliment, not a knock. It does light and clean better than almost anyone, and the 10 is that style at its most unforced. But it also means the step up to a fifteen- or eighteen-year-old is a step up in price far more than a step up in kind. The fruit gets a little waxier, the citrus a little sharper, and the tag nearly doubles. That is the trade the gaps over the room are describing, and it is worth seeing plainly before you pay for the years.

There is a plain logic running down the range, and none of it is about the liquid. A light, well-liked Speyside name can price its older bottles for the people who collect ages, because those bottles are bought partly to own. The model cannot see any of that. It sees a whisky and the ten nearest it on flavour, and it reports the gap without sentiment. At the young end that gap is small or negative. At the old end it is large.

So what do you buy? For drinking, the 10 at $81 is the clear answer, the one bottle under its neighbourhood and the house style at its most honest. If you prefer the softer, younger pour and the shelf tag is what you are weighing, the Arboralis at $77 is a dollar cheaper and perfectly nice, just know it sits a touch above its company rather than below. The 15 at $149 is for people who already love Glen Grant and want the extra years badly enough to pay well over the room for them. And the 18, at $214, is an age-statement purchase first: buy it because you want an eighteen-year-old Glen Grant on the shelf, not because the price makes a case for itself, because it does not.

The oldest bottle in a range usually carries the widest gap. Here the youngest carries the only one that runs the right way.