1/Ardbeg Wee Beastie is $106 this week. Price its features the way Dan Murphy's prices the rest of the whisky and you land on $91, so it sits about 16% over the going rate for those features. That gap is where this starts.
2/What is that $91 made of? Its strength comes to 43% of it, being a single malt 19%, its age 18%, and the name on the label the last 17%. Those are the features the going rate can see, each priced the way the rest of the whisky is.
3/What the going rate can't see is peat smoke and sea air — wood smoke, phenolic vapours, a sea breeze off the shore — which is what the Wee Beastie is strongest in. None of the features that set that $91 carries a price for it.
4/An Ardbeg Wee Beastie drinker gets about 92% of it from Lagavulin 8, $99 this week, going to the shore with salt and peat smoke of its own. A pour at home runs $4.05 a standard drink for the Wee Beastie and $3.73 for the Lagavulin, both under the $6.28 a $13 pint comes to.
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