From the Blends desk · Thread · The whole shelf · 2026-10-01

Ballantine's lands on its number; Blue and Compass Box the dear end

mergedmay_publish truequality passsite_publish trueprices: 10 price claim(s) verified live

1/Ballantine's Finest lands bang on its own 360° jury number this week — a 0% gap, as close to fair as this blended shelf gets. Twenty of twenty priced live at Dan Murphy's this Thursday, so it's the whole shelf. Since our last look 21 days back, 13 of the 20 moved price or zone.

2/How I read it: each price against the fair value its own ten-seat jury hands that bottle, in percent. Nothing on this shelf dips under its mean, so the near end reads "least over", not a discount. The floor is supermarket blends; the ceiling is Compass Box and a Blue Label.

3/The least-over end, all live. Ballantine's Finest 1L at $73, dead on its number, 0.0%. Johnnie Walker Red 1.125L at $79, a whisker over at 0.22%. Red again in the 1L at $65, 0.23%. Three bottles the jury calls priced right. Rare for a shelf to offer that.

4/The character behind these blends, pooled off the shelf's own reviews, not any one bottle: a bonfire edge, a cracked mustard-seed bite, iconic weight, an impressive carry across the glass. Scotch wearing many hands at once. That's the house style the category sells.

5/The dear end. Compass Box Peat Monster at $102 sits about 39% over its own mean — the widest gap here, a live price, not a stale one. Blue Label at $239 runs 13% over, the top sticker on the shelf. Compass Box Glasgow Blend $90, near 7%. Craft and prestige both carry a tax.

6/So the tidy read: a blended shelf with three bottles priced honest and a long premium tail. Twenty live, all over their own number, least-over the Ballantine's and the two Reds. For a fair everyday pour tonight, the $73 Ballantine's or the $65 Red?

Sources

Coverage: 20 of 20 members priced live in the 2026-10-01 harvest (100%) — grounding.coverage (n_observed/n_members).
Price band $52.00–$239.95, median $78.47; scope-average CE 360° mean ≈ $70.93 — grounding.price_band, grounding.ce_360_mean_avg.
Shelf character words (region-level, parent-relative, pooled over 17 reviews): scotch, cracked, iconic, bonfire, impressive, mustard-seed — noise tokens (many, how, provide, seed, how) dropped. No per-bottle tasting notes are asserted; the words describe the shelf, not any one bottle.
Cool-down (decision 15): Multi-Regional Blend (region): led 2026-09-10-whole-shelf-blends.md 21 day(s) earlier — CHANGED, may lead again; the piece must say what changed: 13 of 20 bottles changed price or 360° zone (65%; the bar is 10%) (2026-09-10.r to 2026-10-01.1)

End	Item	Price	Gap %	Priced
Hot 1	Ballantine's Finest Blended Scotch Whisky 1L	$73	+0.0%	observed 2026-10-01
Hot 2	Johnnie Walker Red Label Blended Scotch Whisky 1.125L	$79	+0.22%	observed 2026-10-01
Hot 3	Johnnie Walker Red Label Blended Scotch Whisky 1L	$65	+0.23%	observed 2026-10-01
(hot)	Cutty Sark Original Blended Scotch Whisky 700mL	$59	+0.32%	observed 2026-10-01
(hot)	McAllister Scotch Whisky 1L	$67	+1.0%	observed 2026-10-01
Cold 1	Compass Box The Peat Monster Blended Malt Scotch Whisky 700mL	$102	+38.54%	observed 2026-10-01
Cold 2	Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky 700mL	$239	+13.12%	observed 2026-10-01
Cold 3	Compass Box Glasgow Blend Scotch Whisky 700mL	$90	+7.18%	observed 2026-10-01
(cold)	Johnnie Walker Black Ruby Blended Scotch Whisky 700mL	$70	+5.24%	observed 2026-10-01
(cold)	Johnnie Walker Green Label Blended Scotch Whisky 700mL	$107	+4.7%	observed 2026-10-01

Omissions

None recorded.

Notes for reviewer

Scope is a region-labelled multi-regional blend pack; every member is a blended or blended-malt Scotch, so no off-origin single-malt swept in. The region tag is the scope label, not a geographic origin claim.
The cool-down line reports 13 of 20 bottles moved price or 360° zone (65%, above the 10% bar); the post states that count plainly in post 1 as a change, not a trend or a cause.
Shelf words are pooled scope-level only. The post uses "bonfire", "cracked", "mustard-seed", "iconic", "impressive" to colour the category; none is attached to a single bottle.

Format note

Whole Shelf, scope Multi-Regional Blend (region), vintage 2026-10-01.1, pack region-multi-regional-blend-aggregate.json. Gap basis PERCENTAGE; ce_gap_pct=(price−CE 360° mean)/price×100, each bottle's premium over its own CE 360° consensus; 'hot'=smallest premium (least over fair value), 'cold'=largest. No bottle sits below its own mean, so 'hot' is not a bargain. 'Hot'/'cold' are value labels only, never velocity or trend. Coverage 20 of 20 priced live in the 2026-10-01 harvest (100%). Sources holds the stored top/bottom notable-mover cut, not the full ranked shelf.

Frontmatter as merged

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source file: drafts/2026-10-01-whole-shelf-multi-regional-blend.md