At Hellyers Road the two cheapest now undercut their rooms

A note on the yardstick before the numbers. The model pairs each bottle with the ten whiskies closest to it on flavour and takes their middle price as the going rate for the style this week, the room the bottle is standing in. Hellyers Road runs a middle price around $135, which reflects how dear Tasmanian malt tends to be against the wider shelf. The distillery makes an approachable, cereal-and-tropical-fruit style off the north-west coast, and the news this week is where two of its bottles sit relative to that company.

The Roaring Forties is the standout. At $99 it lands about 23% under its room of roughly $128, the widest value gap in the range and a rare thing to be able to say about Tasmanian whisky. It is the easy-drinking end of the house, light and creamy with a banana note, tropical fruit, a grassy, cereal freshness. Under a hundred dollars and priced well below its neighbours, it is the one to grab. The Double Cask sits just above it on the same side of the line: $120 against a room near $137, about 12% under. This is the rounder, sweeter bottle, orange and honey, caramel, a soft sandalwood note and a touch of berry. Two bottles, both asking less than the whiskies they compete with, and together they make the case for the distillery better than its pricing usually allows.

Above them the older pair reverts to type. The Journeyman, the eight-year-old, is $150 against a room of about $125, around 20% over. It carries the house character with more weight, banana and cream turning to caramel and a woody, faintly bitter finish, but you pay a fifth over the room for the extra years. The 7-year-old Peated is $150 against roughly $123, about 22% over, and it is the outlier of the set on flavour: genuinely smoky, with a minty, liquorice lift and an oily texture over the sweetness. If you want a peated Tasmanian it is a fine one, but it is priced clearly above its company, as the older bottles here tend to be.

It is worth being clear about what the room figure is telling you with these two. Both the Journeyman and the Peated are being judged against the whiskies nearest them on flavour, which for Tasmanian single malt is already a dear crowd. So a 20% premium over a room near $125 is not the distillery being greedy so much as it is age and specialist production costing what they cost on this part of the shelf. The point is simply that the younger bottles manage to beat that same crowd on price and the older ones do not, which is the opposite of how the range usually reads.

That matters because Hellyers Road, like most Tasmanian distilleries, is often a hard sell on value alone. A new buyer looking at a wall of Australian malt priced well into three figures could be forgiven for walking past. This week the entry bottles give that buyer a reason to stop, and a cheap, well-priced way in to a style that normally asks a lot up front.

So the range splits down the middle this week. The two younger, cheaper bottles undercut their rooms; the two older, dearer ones sit a fifth or more over. That is a better shape than Hellyers Road often shows, and it puts the value exactly where a new buyer would want to start.

So, buying. For value and for a first Tasmanian malt, the Roaring Forties at $99 is the pick without much argument, under a hundred dollars and well under its room, the easiest entry the distillery offers. The Double Cask at $120 is the one to reach for if you want a little more richness and still a price below its neighbours. The Journeyman at $150 is for a drinker who wants the house style with more age and is content to pay over the room for it; the 7-year-old Peated at $150 is the buy only if smoke is what you are after, because on price alone it sits above its company. Start at the bottom and Hellyers Road is, unusually, a bargain this week.

One more thing in the Roaring Forties' favour. It is not a stripped-back budget bottle standing in for the real thing; it is a proper expression of the house style, the light and tropical side of Hellyers Road done well, and it happens to be the cheapest thing the distillery puts on this shelf. Getting the character and the low price in the same bottle is the whole reason it stands out, and it is why a newcomer should start there rather than reaching straight for the dearer, older stock.

Tasmanian whisky rewards patience and usually punishes the wallet. This week Hellyers Road flips the second half of that, at least at the cheaper end, and the Roaring Forties is the reason to pay attention.