Aberlour 12 Double Cask at $105 for members

Put plainly: at $105 for members against a usual of around $113, this is about as low as we've seen it.

Before the glass, the arithmetic around it. If you ask the drinkers of the bottles sitting nearest to this one what they'd pay for Aberlour 12 Double Cask, each starting from what they already pay for their own, a Glengoyne 15 drinker lands at about $140, which is 86% of what their own bottle costs them, marking it down mostly for not being from the Highlands and for being younger than theirs. The other way round, an Aberlour 12 Double Cask drinker puts Glengoyne 15 at 93% of their own bottle, marking it down mostly for being older than theirs and for the name on the label. Run the same question across the drinkers of the bottles nearest it and the answers stretch from $79 to $147, and at $105 for members this week the price sits inside that spread.

As for the whisky itself, the nose is sweet and simple but with some power behind it: orange peel, banana, red apple and vanilla, toasted nuts, a hint of aniseed and heather, with chocolate and barley coming through as it opens. The mouthfeel is thin yet the taste is intense, carrying orange, chocolate, oak and apple, before a medium-short finish of orange, chocolate, sweet barley and cooked apple. It is matured in American bourbon and European sherry casks. Worked out by the pour, it comes to about $4.75 a standard drink across the roughly 22 in the bottle, which is a glass at home for less than the roughly $6.28 a standard drink of a pint at the pub.

If you fancy a change, three bottles sit close enough to stand in.

Edradour 10, $112, leans on cider apples, malt, almonds, vanilla and honey, creamy and malty with a persistent nuttiness and pronounced sherry. To an Aberlour 12 Double Cask drinker it gives about 98% of what the Aberlour does, for 107% of its price.

Aberlour 14, $160 this week and usually around $140, runs richer and rounder: jammy peaches, marzipan, vanilla and toffee, sweet and creamy, with clove, cinnamon and a little candied ginger sitting behind. To an Aberlour 12 Double Cask drinker it gives about 98% of what the 12 does, for 152% of its price.

Tamdhu 12, $98 for members, opens dry with citrus, hazelnut and dry sherry, then fills out on the palate with sweeter oloroso notes, cinnamon and banoffee pie. To an Aberlour 12 Double Cask drinker it gives about 97% of what the Aberlour does, for 93% of its price.

So, who is this week for? If Aberlour 12 Double Cask is already your bottle, $105 for members is the week to keep a spare in. If you lean towards the drier, sherried end, Tamdhu 12 at $98 pulls in that direction. If you came across from Glengoyne 15 and want something sitting in similar sherried, nutty territory, Edradour 10 will read as the most familiar. And if you simply want more weight and a longer, sweeter finish, Aberlour 14 carries that, at $160 this week. For everyone else, any one of these is a pour at home that still comes in under a pint at the pub.