At Balvenie, the sherried 12 undercuts its own kind

Five Balvenies are on the shelf this week, the middle landing at $161, from a $99 everyday 12 up to a $727 twenty-one-year-old. Balvenie is a Speyside house that sells itself on wood: honeyed malt finished in this cask or that, with the finish usually the thing you are asked to pay for. To read the shelf I set each bottle against the ten whiskies the model counts nearest it in flavour and took the middle of those ten prices, the going rate for that bottle's kind this week rather than a judgement on the whisky. Line the five up and the value runs almost backwards to the price. The two cheapest are the fair ones. The dearer the bottle, the further its tag floats above the drams it resembles.

The standout is the DoubleWood 12, which is also the Balvenie most people have on a shelf at home. It is the honeyed spirit given a second spell in oloroso sherry casks, and it shows: a soft sherry richness, floral and honeyed, a spicy nutmeg warmth on the finish. At $100 it is asking about 22% under its neighbourhood of $128. That neighbourhood is dearer sherried malts, the company a sherry-finished whisky keeps, and the DoubleWood is sitting a clear step below them. For a bottle this well known to come in under its kind is the sort of quiet value that is easy to walk straight past, because nothing about a familiar label shouts bargain.

Right beside it is the 12 American Oak, the same age but finished the other way, left in first-fill bourbon barrels rather than sherry. It is the lighter reading of Balvenie: sweet and gentle, honey and lemon, a soft caramel with the faintest wisp of smoke. At $99 against a neighbourhood of $103, it is about 4% under, call it level. A fair price for a clean, easy, bourbon-cask Speyside. Between the two 12s you have a genuine choice of style at much the same money, and neither is overpriced, which is not something you can say moving up the shelf.

The 14 Caribbean Cask is where the premium starts. It is finished in casks that held Caribbean rum, and that gives it a distinct sweetness: toffee and banana, coconut, a baking-spice and nutmeg lift. A likeable, slightly showy whisky. At $161 against a neighbourhood of $104 it runs about 55% over, which is the finish doing the talking. You are paying half as much again as the drams nearest it in flavour for the rum-cask twist, and whether that is worth it comes down to how much you want that particular sweetness.

Then the top of the shelf, where the numbers get serious. The 21 Year Old Portwood is $453 against a neighbourhood of $302, about 50% over, and the Stories 21 "The Second Red Rose" is $727 against $330, roughly 120% over, better than double the going rate for its company. These are old, rare, port-and-sherry-finished bottles, and the model places both squarely in rich-cask territory, leaning on rum-cask sweetness and dried-fruit sherry. I will not put tasting notes on either, because neither has a review in the data I trust, and guessing at the flavour of a $727 whisky is exactly the sort of thing this column does not do. What the numbers say plainly enough is that both ask a steep premium even against their own rarefied peers, the Portwood's half-again and the Red Rose's double.

The thing to hold on to across all five is that the finish is what you pay for, not the spirit underneath. Balvenie makes a honeyed, approachable malt and then sends it into different wood: bourbon for the American Oak, oloroso for the DoubleWood, rum for the Caribbean Cask, port for the two 21s. The base whisky is much the same animal in each. What climbs, as you move up the shelf, is the exotic the cask promises and the rarity the age implies, and the tags climb with it faster than the drams nearest each bottle in flavour do. That is why the cheapest finish here, the familiar oloroso of the DoubleWood, turns out to be the one tagged under its kind, while the showier rum and port finishes run well over theirs.

For a buyer, the shelf sorts itself. If you want the best value Balvenie this week, it is the DoubleWood 12, a genuinely good sherried malt tagged under its kind. If you prefer the lighter, bourbon-cask style, the 12 American Oak is right there at a fair price. Step up to the 14 Caribbean Cask only if the rum-cask sweetness is specifically what you are after, knowing you are paying a half more than its peers for it. And treat the two 21s as what they are: cabinet bottles, bought for the occasion, the rarity and the age, not for value, because on value they are the dearest things in the room relative to their company. The smart money on Balvenie, as on a lot of shelves, is near the bottom.