At $559, Glenfiddich Grand Cru 23 asks more than the drinkers of the bottles sitting closest to it would hand over. So it's a bottle for its own fans first: it fits them, and it pinches nearly everyone else.
Here's the bottle. Twenty-three years in American oak with a small number of sherry casks, then up to six months finishing in French cuvée wine casks. The nose leads with canned apricots in syrup, toasted marshmallows, apple blossom and honey. The palate is on the fuller side — pears, vanilla, freshly sawn timber, warm white bread, caramel, cloves and milk chocolate. Toffee and instant coffee linger on the finish.
On price, it's $559 at Dan Murphy's this week. It usually sells around $559, and across what we've seen it's run from $478 to $559. At about 22 standard drinks in the bottle, that works out to $25.30 a pour at home.
Now the interesting part. What would the drinkers of the bottles nearest the Grand Cru pay for it, each starting from what they already pay for their own? A The Glenlivet 18 drinker would pay about $136, which is 68% of what their own bottle costs them, marking the Grand Cru down for being older than theirs and for its wine-cask fruit. The other way round, a Grand Cru drinker puts The Glenlivet 18 at about 73% of their own bottle, marking it down for being younger and, again, for that wine-cask fruit. Across the drinkers of the bottles nearest it, the answers run from $71 to $532. This week's $559 sits above all of them: priced for its fans.
The stand-ins differ more than they look:
The Glenlivet 18, $200. Dried, heathery flowers, tinned pineapple and windfall apples, with a cedar-and-nutmeg edge and a custard-tart richness. To a Grand Cru drinker it gives about 73% of what the Grand Cru does, for 36% of the price.
Glen Moray 21, $343. Oolong and ripe red fruits wrapped in a wisp of Tawny Port, baking spice, caramel and oak, creamy and honeyed on the palate. To a Grand Cru drinker it gives about 73% of the Grand Cru, for 61% of the price. It usually sells around $343, and we've seen it from $304 to $343.
Tomintoul 25, $733. Peaches, malt, honey and vanilla, then ripe apples, cocoa and milky coffee, finishing spicy and drying. To a Grand Cru drinker it gives about 69% of the Grand Cru, for 131% of the price. It usually sells around $733.
So who should pour what?
If the Grand Cru is already your bottle, $559 is the number this week, and nothing above gives you quite its mix of apricot and pear, wine-cask sweetness and that long coffee-and-toffee close. Stay where you are.
If you love The Glenlivet 18, you're paying 36% of the Grand Cru's price for close to three-quarters of the experience, with its own drawn-curtains, settling-in-for-winter character. A comfortable place to be.
If Glen Moray 21 is your pour, you keep most of what the Grand Cru offers for noticeably less outlay, and the Port-wrapped red fruit is a fair stand-in for the French-cask sweetness.
And if you reach for Tomintoul 25, you already pay more than the Grand Cru asks, so moving across is a question of which style you'd rather drink, not of what you'll spend.
A yes for the faithful, and a yes for everyone standing at the bottles beside them.
None recorded.
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