Even the budget blends here ask more than their neighbours

Multi-regional blends are the most ordinary scotch there is: malt and grain married up from several distilleries, the Red Labels and Ballantine's and J&Bs that between them outsell every single malt put together. Twenty-seven here, a middle price near $80, a spread that runs from the low fifties up to a $366 bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue at the far end. You would expect the inexpensive blends to undercut the whiskies nearest them in style. The six most prominent this week each do the opposite. Every one asks more than the crowd of bottles the model reads as closest to it in flavour.

Take the one that asks the least over its neighbours first. Isle of Skye 8 Year Old is $64, about 14% above the roughly $56 that its ten nearest run. For a blend it carries a real whiff of island smoke, rich honey and toasted oak with peat underneath and a citrus lift at the top. That bit of Skye character is what the small premium buys, and of the six it is the one I would reach for.

A rung below it on price, two soft everyday blends sit a little further over their crowd. Cutty Sark is $59, about 16% over a roughly $51 band, all grain-sweet toffee and a thread of chocolate with a faint bitterness at the close, light and uncomplicated. J&B Rare is $56, about 24% over its roughly $45 neighbours, the lightest and grassiest of the lot, lemon and apple peel and a clean sweetness that suits a long drink better than a quiet glass. Both are cheap in absolute money. Neither is cheap against the company it keeps.

Then the wide gaps, and here the value reading gets harder to defend. Pure Scot is $79, about 55% over the roughly $51 its nearest neighbours run, the steepest premium of the six. It also turns up with no published tasting notes of its own this week, so beyond the model's read of it, a light cereal blend with a faint maritime edge, there is genuinely little to tell you about what is in the glass. McAllister, a one-litre bottle at $67, sits about 40% over its roughly $48 crowd and is in the same spot, a soft light blend with nothing on record about its flavour. Ballantine's Finest, also a litre, is $69 and about 47% over a roughly $47 band. That one at least has a character written down, light caramel and dried orange with butterscotch and an easy sweetness, the everyday kitchen-cupboard blend. Everyday, and still priced a good way above its neighbours.

None of this makes them poor buys in absolute terms. A blend at fifty or sixty dollars is the workhorse of the drinks cupboard, the bottle you pour over ice or lengthen with soda rather than the one you nose and sit with for an hour. Judged on that job, several here do it perfectly well for the money, the Cutty Sark and the J&B in particular. The value read is a narrower question than whether a bottle is cheap. It asks whether a bottle is cheap against the whiskies the model reads as its own kind, and on that test these six all come up a little short, two of them by a distance. The distinction matters because the famous name on a budget blend is doing some of the pricing, and the name is the one thing the glass cannot taste.

There is a reason an inexpensive blend reads as a premium here rather than a bargain. The category is a grab-bag by definition, malt and grain from wherever, so when the model lines up a bottle's ten nearest in flavour it pairs these soft, sweet, light blends with whatever sits closest, and for most of them that nearest company is cheaper grain-forward stuff with no name on it. Land among bottles that cost less than you and you read as dear, even at fifty-nine dollars. None of that is a mark against the whisky in the glass. It just says the glass has cheaper lookalikes than its label would suggest.

So how to buy well off the budget end of the blends. If value against the crowd is the whole question, there is no standout this week, and that itself is the finding before you reach for a name out of habit. The two gentlest premiums are the Isle of Skye at $64, which hands you a little smoke and honey for the money, and the Cutty Sark at $59 if you want something softer and sweeter to pour without thinking about it. J&B at $56 is the one for a tall glass with ice and soda. I would leave the Pure Scot and the McAllister where they stand on value grounds; you are paying the most over your neighbours for blends nobody has set a tasting note down for. The Johnnie Walker Blue at the top of the shelf, and the Black Labels a rung under it, are a different conversation, and several of them the model cannot rank cleanly this week in any case.