Glengoyne 10: the quiet one everyone keeps pouring

At a mate's place on a Friday, the bottle that gets pulled out of the cupboard is the Glengoyne 10. Nobody announces it. It just gets poured, topped up, poured again, and by the end of the night it is the one that emptied.

That gap is the whole story here: the critics and the drinkers see this bottle differently. On the critics' rating, Glengoyne 10 sits in the bottom 15% of the whiskies at Dan Murphy's. On how broadly drinkers like it, it is in the top 12%. Same bottle, two readings, and the room on Friday night was voting with the drinkers.

Glengoyne make it from entirely unpeated malt, their entry-level 10 year old and the easiest of their malts to find. The nose is fresh and well-rounded, medium-sweet, with malt and oak and a hint of sherry. The palate is smooth and delicate, a little oaky, with a suggestion of cooking apples. The finish runs pleasingly long, buttery and vanilla, slowly drying.

If you want a change, three bottles sit close. The Glengoyne 12 ($109) is the cask-strength one without chill-filtering, fragrant once you add a drop of water, with cherry pits and apples; to a Glengoyne 10 drinker it gives about 96% of what the 10 does. Aberfeldy 12 ($104) is fresh and floral, tropical fruit and honey and vanilla over an orange-marmalade finish, and it comes in at about 95%. The Deveron 12 ($91), soft and sweet with vanilla, ginger, ripe peaches and apple blossom, lands at about 90%. Any of the three will do the job on a night the Glengoyne has run out.

Glengoyne 10 is $88 for members at Dan Murphy's this week. It usually sells around $88, and across what we've seen it has run between $88 and $99. Worked out per standard drink, that is about $3.98 a pour at home — under the roughly $6.28 a standard drink costs across a $13 pint at the pub, which holds about two.

Here is the other way to read the price: what the drinkers of the bottles nearest Glengoyne 10 would pay for it, each starting from what they already pay for their own. A Glencadam 15 drinker would pay about $121 for the Glengoyne — 76% of what their own bottle costs them — valuing it a little below their own mainly because it is younger than theirs and lighter in strength. The other way round, a Glengoyne 10 drinker puts the Glencadam at 79% of their own, mainly because it is older and stronger than the Glengoyne. Across the bottles nearest it, the answers run from $82 to $121, and at $88 for members this week the Glengoyne sits inside what those drinkers would pay.

So, a yes for each kind of drinker. If the 10 is already your bottle, this week asks nothing new of you — it is where it usually is, and it is still the one the room keeps reaching for. Lean richer and older and the Glencadam 15 is the one to try. After more fruit up top, Aberfeldy 12 is your pour. Want it softer and rounder, and The Deveron 12 does the job. And if you have never had the Glengoyne 10, a Friday at a mate's place is as good a reason as any to pour one and see which way you'd vote.