1/A whole country on one shelf. 163 Scotch bottles, every one live-priced this week, each laid against what its own CE 360° jury reckons it is worth. On a shelf this size the story is the spread: from bottles dead on their mark to one asking nearly six-tenths again over it.
2/First, the fair end. "Hot" here means smallest premium over a bottle's own CE 360° mean — closest to what the jury says it should cost. Not a discount. Nothing on this shelf sits below its own mean; the fair end just gets closest to zero.
3/The hottest three are all blends. Ballantine's Finest 1L lands bang on its mark at $69 — zero premium, the floor of the whole country. Johnnie Walker Red Label 1.125L runs a fraction over at $77 (0.27%). Cutty Sark is $59, a third of a percent over.
4/Those are the everyday pouring blends, priced almost exactly where the jury puts them. Two more sit right beside them: JW Red 1L at $69 (0.29%) and McAllister 1.5L at $97 (0.41%). Five bottles, none more than half a percent over fair.
5/The cold end is a different animal. Chivas Regal Ultis carries the biggest premium in the country at $285 — 58.73% over its own CE 360° mean. That is a live, checked ticket, not a data artefact: shelf price and model agree. Nearly sixty percent over is what it asks.
6/Talisker Port Ruighe is close behind at $149, 54.81% over its mean. Then Compass Box The Peat Monster at $85 (37.83%) and Bunnahabhain Stiuireadair at $108 (31.19%). The words the country's reviews reach for most: smoke, sherry, peat.
7/Glenfiddich Grand Cru 23 Year Old rounds out the cold five at $559, 28.08% over — a dear bottle, but proportionally less of a premium than the Ultis at half its price. On a 163-bottle shelf, the dearest is rarely the one carrying the most.
8/Here is the bit that stayed with me. Across a whole country's worth of Scotch, the fair end and the dear end are not high shelf versus low. Ballantine's at $69 is fairest; a $285 blend is dearest. Price and premium pull in different directions.
price_provenance == observed for every member); carried_ids is empty. Nothing is silently included on a stale price.None recorded.
Whole Shelf, scope Scotland (country), vintage 2026-09-10.r. Gap basis: percentage, read from the aggregate as stored — the pack's price range ($50.99–$800.00) is a ratio over 2, which reads as percentage rather than dollars. ce_gap_pct = (price − ce_360_mean) / price × 100, each bottle's premium over its own CE 360° consensus; 'hot' is the smallest premium (closest to fair value, not a bargain or a discount), 'cold' the largest. Hot/cold are value-signal labels only — never sales velocity, popularity, or trend. Coverage: 163 of 163 members priced live in the 2026-09-10 harvest. Sources holds the stored top/bottom cut, not the full ranked shelf — the sidecar does not store every member's gap.
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