The Jack Daniel's shelf is one whiskey in five sizes

Lynchburg is a one-distillery town, and this week the shelf shows it. Everything on it is Jack Daniel's. The Old No.7 tags run from a 700mL up to a 1.75-litre bottle of the identical whiskey, and the one that is different, Gentleman Jack, is a genuine step up in the glass. So this is not really a shelf of competing choices. It is one everyday whiskey sold by the measure, plus a single upgrade, and the useful questions are which size of Old No.7 to buy and whether the upgrade is worth it.

Take the sizes first, because the tags look wildly different and the whiskey inside does not change. Old No.7 is $57 at 700mL, $80 at a litre, $95 at 1.136 litres and $154 at 1.75 litres. The model treats the bigger bottles as sitting too far from any reliable crowd of comparable whiskeys to give a fair value read, which is the honest call: there is no neighbourhood of 1.75-litre bottles to measure a 1.75-litre bottle against. So the sensible way to compare them is per litre, and per litre they land remarkably close together, between about $80 and $88. The 700mL works out near $81 a litre, the plain litre bottle near $80, the 1.136-litre near $84, the big 1.75 near $88. The jumbo bottle is not the bargain the format implies. If anything the plain one-litre is the best rate of the lot, and the 1.75 the dearest per drink.

That matters because the instinct with a shelf like this is to reach for the biggest bottle on the assumption that size means saving. This week it does not. Buy the size you will actually get through, not the size that looks cheapest on the tag, and know that trading up from the 700mL to the 1.75 buys you convenience and a lower checkout-per-millilitre only in your imagination. The whiskey is the same easy, sweet Tennessee pour in every one of them, light charcoal mellowing over banana and soft corn, green fruit and a little pepper.

The one real choice on the shelf is Gentleman Jack, and it is the only bottle here the model can place against a proper crowd. At $107 for a litre it is clearly the dearest pour by volume, around $107 a litre against Old No.7's $80-ish, and even read per litre it sits well above the going rate for whiskeys of its style. What you are paying for is the extra step: Gentleman Jack is charcoal-mellowed twice rather than once, and it drinks smoother and a touch sweeter for it, caramel and light oak over the same banana-and-charcoal base, the rough edges sanded off. Whether that is worth a clear premium over standard Old No.7 is a matter of taste, not value. It is a nicer, smoother whiskey; it is also a good deal more per drink, and the model reads it as priced above its neighbours even once the bottle size is allowed for.

It helps to know what is actually in these bottles, because the label does not change with the size. Old No.7 is the standard Jack Daniel's, Tennessee whiskey rather than bourbon, which means it is charcoal-mellowed before it goes into the barrel, the step that gives it that soft, sooty, banana-sweet character with the edges taken off. It is the same liquid whether you buy 700 millilitres of it or nearly two litres. Gentleman Jack takes that one step further, charcoal-mellowed a second time after maturing, which is where the extra smoothness and the gentler, sweeter finish come from. That second mellowing is the whole difference on this shelf. Everything else is a question of how much of the standard whiskey you want to carry home.

Which makes the buying unusually simple, once the sizes are set aside. There is no hunting for hidden value here, no overlooked bottle a tag to the left, because there is only one other bottle and it is a different whiskey at a higher price. The decision is honest and small: Old No.7, in the size that suits you, or pay up for the smoother Gentleman Jack. Good to settle that before you stand in front of the shelf wondering why five tags for what is nearly one whiskey span a hundred dollars.

So, buying off a one-distillery shelf. If you drink Jack and want the best rate, the plain one-litre Old No.7 at $80 is marginally the sharpest per-litre buy, and the 700mL at $57 is the one to get if you would rather not commit to a big bottle. Skip the 1.75-litre at $154 unless you are catering, because per drink it is the dearest Old No.7 here, not the cheapest. And reach for Gentleman Jack at $107 only if you specifically want the smoother, twice-mellowed pour and are happy paying up for it, because on these numbers it is a flavour upgrade rather than a value one. On a shelf that is really one whiskey wearing five price tags, the trick is to ignore the size of the bottle and do the sum by the litre.