The surprise with Jameson this week is which bottle looks expensive. It is not the fancy one.
Three Jamesons are on the shelf, and all three sit over their flavour-crowd, the ten whiskeys the model rates nearest each on taste. That much is ordinary for a name this famous. What is less ordinary is the order. The plain Jameson, the one in nearly every trolley in the country, is the furthest over its crowd of the three. The dressed-up bottles are closer to fair. The brand's middle price sits around $70, and the everyday blend in the big bottle pushes past it.
Take the standard Jameson first, in the litre. This is the one you know: a light, approachable Irish blend, soft apple and a gentle sherried fruitiness, with raspberry and strawberry notes and a citrus-peel lift. Easy, clean, nobody's enemy. On the shelf it asks $80, and its crowd of nearest tastes sits around $51. That is nearly thirty dollars of air, about 57% over. Some of that is the litre format doing the work, and some of it is simply that Jameson is Jameson and the name carries a toll. Either way, judged against the whiskeys that drink most like it, the everyday bottle is the one paying the steepest premium of the three.
1/Jameson Black Barrel is an Irish blend. Monkey Shoulder is a Scottish blended malt. Different island, different make-up. The profile model seats them sixth-closest in the whole set anyway.
2/And this Thursday they're low in the same breath. Jameson $70, Monkey Shoulder $58 at Dan Murphy's, both plain shelf tickets, neither a members-only price. Each is parked at the bottom of its own recent range.
3/Worth a pinch of salt: the value model is cooler on the match, thirteenth rather than sixth. So take them as two easy everyday blends that line up on flavour arithmetic, not as the same dram in two bottles.
4/Both lean corn-and-cask with a little sherry edge to them. At $70 for the Irish or $58 for the Scotch, which is filling the glass this week? Both Dan Murphy's. If your local shelf reads different, drop the ticket below.
310 bottles at Dan Murphy's can be priced per standard drink this week. Cheapest first: Grant's Triple Wood 1 litre at $1.99 a standard drink; the median is $4.16; Dalmore 21 Malt is the highest at $42.68. 235 of the 310 come in under a pint at the pub, which works out at $6.28 a standard drink.
305 bottles at Dan Murphy's can be priced per standard drink this week. Cheapest first: McAllister 1 litre at $2.00 a standard drink; the median is $4.03; Dalmore 21 Malt is the highest at $42.68. 228 of the 305 come in under a pint at the pub, which works out at $6.28 a standard drink.
All three Jamesons on the shelf ask more than the whiskeys around them. The gentle surprise is which one asks the least: not the famous green-labelled bottle everyone reaches for, but the dark, charred-cask one sitting just above it.
The Jameson in nearly every Australian liquor cabinet is the dearest of the three on the shelf, measured against its own company. The two bottles with something extra going on ask less over their neighbours than the plain one does.
Jameson keeps its Australian range small: the standard blend, a stout-cask version, and Black Barrel. This week Black Barrel is the one that best earns what it asks, which is not something you can often say about the dearest bottle in a lineup.
| bottle | region | latest ticket | read | window price | CE 360° mean | premium | shelf rank | per std drink | drink rank | content |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jameson Black Barrel Blended Irish Whiskey | Midleton | $69.85 | observed | $69.85 | $53.97 | 22.7% | #2 of 6 | $3.16 | #4 of 6 | 4 |
| Jameson Blended Irish Whiskey | Midleton | $79.95 | observed | $53.87 | $46.90 | 12.9% | #1 of 6 | $2.53 | #1 of 6 | 2 |
| Jameson Caskmates Stout Edition Irish Whiskey | Midleton | $67.99 | observed | $72.99 | $54.44 | 25.4% | #4 of 6 | $2.81 | #2 of 6 | 2 |