Only the plain Old No.7 sits under its neighbours

Jack Daniel's usually sits over its company, which is what you would expect of the best-known whiskey name on earth. The shelf's midpoint is around $94, while the neighbourhoods these bottles are sorted into sit down in the fifties and sixties, so a gap is the ordinary condition here, not the exception. The surprise is a lone bottle that breaks it, and it turns out to be the most ordinary one of the lot. To place each whiskey, the model sets it against the ten nearest in flavour and reads off the middle of their prices, the going rate for that style on this week's shelf, which I will call the bottle's room.

Begin with the Old No.7 itself, the square black-label bottle that is Jack Daniel's to most of the world. In the 700mL it is $54, about 5% under a room of roughly $57, the only Jack here tagged below its neighbours. It is the drop everyone knows: soft and easy, corn-sweet with green banana, a little pepper and that sooty charcoal note running underneath. Buy the very same whiskey in the 1L and it reads $77, about 35% over a room near $57, but measured by the litre the two bottles cost the same for the whisky; the wider gap on the big one is the extra three hundred millilitres, not a dearer pour. If you want everyday Jack, the 700mL is the honest buy, and right now a shade under its room.

Gentleman Jack is the double-mellowed, smoother sibling, run through the sugar-maple charcoal twice over rather than once: sweet and light, caramel and soft oak with the same banana lift. In the 700mL it is $70, about 15% over a room of roughly $61, close enough to its company to call fair. In the 1L it is $107, about 98% over a room near $54. Unlike the Old No.7 litre, this one is a little dearer even once you allow for the larger bottle, so the premium is not pure volume here. If Gentleman Jack is what you are after, the smaller bottle is again the one to reach for.

The two genuine step-ups both carry real premiums and, this time, mostly earn the step in the glass if not the whole of the gap. The Bonded is $96, about 66% over a room of roughly $58: bottled in bond at a higher strength, and it shows, caramel and charcoal again but richer, with more char and a peppery spine than the entry bottles muster. The Single Barrel Select is $117, about 98% over a room near $59, and it is the best pour with this name on the shelf, rich and full, caramel and maple over a deeper charcoal, dried fruit and an oak-spice grip the cheaper bottles do not have. Both are better whiskies than the standard drop. Both are also priced well clear of their rooms, which is a different thing from being better, and worth keeping straight in your head when the dearer bottle tempts you.

The common thread is the charcoal. Every one of these is mellowed through a thick bed of sugar-maple charcoal before it ever meets a barrel, and that sooty, sweet-smoke signature is as present in the $54 Old No.7 as in the $117 Single Barrel. So you are not buying a different character as you climb the range; you are buying more of the same one, with more richness and oak at the top, and paying a widening premium for the privilege. The house style is already there in the cheapest bottle on the shelf.

None of this is a knock on the whiskey, and the gaps are less about Jack Daniel's being over-priced than about its being over-known. A less famous distillery has to price close to its neighbours to shift stock, because the name is doing none of the work for it. Jack Daniel's does not have that problem, and the premiums across the range are the receipt for the recognition. The useful move, on a shelf this famous, is to find the bottle where the name happens not to be charging much, and this week that bottle is the plainest one in its smallest ordinary size.

So, buying. For everyday drinking, the Old No.7 700mL at $54 is the clear call, the one Jack tagged under its neighbours and the whole house style in its simplest form. If you like Gentleman Jack's extra polish, buy the 700mL at $70, which sits close to its room, and skip the 1L at $107, which is dearer even by the litre. The Single Barrel Select at $117 is the one to pour when you want the best version of this flavour and have made peace with paying nearly double its room for it; the Bonded at $96 is the pick if you want more strength and char with a reason behind the premium. And whatever you buy, reach for the standard 700mL over its litre twin, because the bigger bottle of the same whiskey only looks like the saving.