On the blend shelf, the bargains have gone missing

These are the whiskies that borrow from everywhere: grain and malt from several regions married into one bottle, which is why the shelf is called the multi-regional blend. Twenty-five of them sit here, from a mixer you could buy for the price of two schooners up to a reserve asking a hundred and fifty. The middle lands at $80. To read the shelf I stood each bottle next to the ten whiskies the model rates nearest it on flavour and took the middle price of those ten. Call that the bottle's neighbourhood: not a verdict on what the whisky is worth, just the going rate for the drams most like it, read off this week's shelf. A bottle can ask more than its neighbourhood, match it, or undercut it. On the blends, this week, not one of the six came in under. They all ask over. What changes is the size of the step, and the step tracks the name on the label.

That is worth pausing on, because a blend is the one style where you might expect the opposite. A blended Scotch is mostly grain whisky, the cheaper, lighter spirit made in big column stills, with a dash of malt stirred through for character. It is built to be affordable and made in enormous volume, which is why the entry blends are the cheapest Scotch you can buy. So when even the humble ones sit over the drams they taste like, and the famous ones sit a long way over, you are watching the brand do the heavy lifting on price. The liquid is similar up and down the shelf. The badge is not.

Start at the bottom, where the step is smallest. J&B Rare is $56 against the roughly $47 its ten nearest cost, about 19% over. It is the light one: grassy, lemon and apple, a clean sweetness and not much weight. A mixing whisky that knows it, and the premium over its company is a few dollars rather than a story.

Cutty Sark is a dollar or two dearer at $59, against a neighbourhood near $46, so about 28% over. Same brief, slightly fuller: grain and toffee, a thread of chocolate, still light on its feet. For a highball or a long pour it does the job. You are paying a little over the going rate, not a lot.

Isle of Skye 8 is the one that earns its step. At $64 it is about 16% over the roughly $55 its neighbours fetch, the tightest gap of the six. It is also the most interesting pour here: rich and honeyed, toasted oak, a real curl of peat and a cocoa note behind. A blend with some Island smoke in it, priced close to the drams it sits beside. If you want character in a blend without paying a malt's money, this is the one doing the most for the least over its band.

McAllister comes as a litre, and the bigger bottle hides what is going on. At $67 for the full litre it looks friendly, but against a neighbourhood near $47 it is about 43% over, the widest proportional gap below the Johnnie Walkers. Its own reviews are thin and I will not borrow anyone else's, so take the character from where the model places it: the orchard-and-cereal register with a maritime edge, a soft everyday blend. Fine in the glass. Just dearer, measured against similar whisky, than the litre on the shelf makes it feel. It is doing the same quiet trick the Gold Label litre pulls further up the row: a bigger bottle makes a price look gentle by spreading it over more whisky, and the eye reads the total rather than the rate. Check the rate.

Then the Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve, which is where the name does the talking. The 700mL is $89, about 37% over its $65 neighbourhood. The litre is $150, which works out around 131% over that same band. Both are the same whisky: cream and dried fruit, a wisp of smoke, melon and barley sugar, the smoothest thing in this group. Here is the bit that surprised me. The litre looks like the premium buy and the 700mL the sensible one, but do the per-millilitre sum and the 700mL is the cheaper pour. The big bottle costs more per drop, not less. Reach for the litre because you want more Gold Label in the house, never because you think it is the saving.

So, by what you are actually after. For a mixer or a tall drink, J&B and Cutty Sark sit at the bottom and ask the least over their company. If you want a blend with some smoke and genuine character, Isle of Skye 8 is the pick and the fairest-priced of the lot against similar drams. If Gold Label is the house pour, buy the 700mL and leave the litre unless you are stocking up. The shelf's lesson is the plain one: blends charge for the name, every one of them this week, so buy the name you like the taste of rather than the one you think is the deal. There is no deal here. There is only which premium you would rather pay.