From the Speyside desk · Thread · The whole shelf · 2026-10-01

Speyside's floor sits on its number; old sherry casks pay rent

mergedmay_publish truequality passsite_publish trueprices: 10 price claim(s) verified live

1/Speyside is the biggest room in the shop. Eighty bottles, all priced live at Dan Murphy's this Thursday — the whole shelf, not a slice. The cheap blends sit near dead-on their jury number; the aged sherry casks pay the rent. Since last look, 35 of 80 have shifted price or zone.

2/How I read it: each price against the fair value its own ten-seat jury gives that bottle, in percent. Nothing on this shelf dips under its own mean. So the near end is "least over", not a discount, not a deal. It is the pour sitting closest to what its peers say it's worth.

3/The least-over end, all live. Glen Moray Classic 1L at $88, barely 0.72% past its jury. Grant's Triple Wood 1L at $69, 0.79% over. Label 5 Premium Reserve 12 at $68, 0.85%. Big litre blends, priced about where consensus lands them. No romance, no markup.

4/The shelf's character, pooled off its own reviews, region-wide: sherry and dark fruit, a rum-cask sweetness, banana, oak, orchard apple. That's the Speyside signature the whole room trades on. It describes the shelf, not any single bottle in it.

5/The dear end. Chivas Regal Ultis at $296 sits about 60% over its own mean, the widest gap here and a live price, not a stale one. Behind it Glenfiddich Grand Cru 23 at $559 near 28%, then Tamdhu Cigar Malt at $290 near 27%. Age and sherry carry a real tax.

6/So the tidy read: a shelf with a firm floor and a long climb. Eighty bottles, every one over its own number, the least-over end all workaday blends. If you want honest value tonight, the $69 Grant's Triple Wood or the $88 Glen Moray Classic litre — which goes in the trolley?

Sources

Coverage: 80 of 80 members priced live in the 2026-10-01 harvest (100%) — grounding.coverage (n_observed/n_members).
Price band $50.99–$799.99, median $114.995; scope-average CE 360° mean ≈ $156.33 — grounding.price_band, grounding.ce_360_mean_avg.
Shelf character words (region-level, parent-relative, pooled over 67 reviews): sherry, rum, dark, banana, oak, apple — grounding.words (noise tokens "sufficient", "these", "european", "speyside" dropped). No per-bottle tasting notes are asserted; the words describe the shelf, not any one bottle.
Cool-down (decision 15): Speyside (region): led 2026-09-10-whole-shelf-speyside.md 21 day(s) earlier — CHANGED, may lead again; the piece must say what changed: 35 of 80 bottles changed price or 360° zone (44%; the bar is 10%) (2026-09-10.r to 2026-10-01.1)

End	Item	Price	Gap %	Priced
Hot 1	Glen Moray Classic Single Malt Scotch Whisky 1L	$88	+0.72%	observed 2026-10-01
Hot 2	Grant's Triple Wood Blended Scotch Whisky 1L	$69	+0.79%	observed 2026-10-01
Hot 3	Label 5 Premium Reserve 12 Year Old Blended Scotch Whisky 700mL	$68	+0.85%	observed 2026-10-01
(hot)	Label 5 Classic Black Blended Scotch Whisky 1L	$72	+0.92%	observed 2026-10-01
(hot)	Glen Moray Classic Single Malt Scotch Whisky 700mL	$71	+0.92%	observed 2026-10-01
Cold 1	Chivas Regal Ultis Blended Malt Scotch Whisky 700mL	$296	+60.46%	observed 2026-10-01
Cold 2	Glenfiddich Grand Cru 23 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky 700mL	$559	+27.9%	observed 2026-10-01
Cold 3	Tamdhu Single Malt Cigar Malt Whisky 700mL	$290	+26.64%	observed 2026-10-01
(cold)	Glenfarclas 25 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky 700mL	$440	+23.6%	observed 2026-10-01
(cold)	Chivas Regal 25 Year Old Blended Scotch Whisky 700mL	$646	+22.14%	observed 2026-10-01

Omissions

None recorded.

Notes for reviewer

None recorded.

Format note

Whole Shelf, scope Speyside (region), vintage 2026-10-01.1, pack region-speyside-aggregate.json. Gap basis PERCENTAGE; ce_gap_pct=(price−CE 360° mean)/price×100, each bottle's premium over its own CE 360° consensus; 'hot'=smallest premium (least over fair value), 'cold'=largest. No bottle sits below its own mean, so 'hot' is not a bargain. 'Hot'/'cold' are value labels only, never velocity or trend. Coverage 80 of 80 priced live in the 2026-10-01 harvest (100%). Sources holds the stored top/bottom notable-mover cut, not the full ranked shelf.

Frontmatter as merged

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source file: drafts/2026-10-01-whole-shelf-speyside.md