The Dram That Picks Its Crowd

Start with the nose, which arrives polished and composed, like a dram that has been waiting a long while to be poured — red apple and cinnamon laid over caramels and salted almonds. The palate is where the years show themselves. Dark cooked fruits, coffee, malty cocoa, sticky toffee pudding, fudge and a fine line of orange move through it, and rolling it slowly around the mouth lets the aged grains carry those select malts out to their full stretch. The finish runs exceptionally long, the toffee pudding lingering beside the spent sweetness of an aniseed ball sucked down to nothing. Smooth is the word this whisky keeps earning.

Chivas Regal 25 is $646 at Dan Murphy's this week, and it usually sells around $646, so there is nothing unexpected in front of you. That works out at about $29.24 a standard drink across the roughly 22 in the bottle — a pour at home that lands above a pint at the pub, which sits near $6.28 a standard drink.

Now the part that gives the bottle its shape. What would the drinkers of the bottles nearest Chivas Regal 25 pay for it, each starting from what they already pay for their own? A Dewar's 18 drinker would pay about $94 for it, which is 71% of what their own bottle costs them, marking it down mostly for being older than theirs and for not coming from the Highlands. The other way round, a Chivas Regal 25 drinker puts Dewar's 18 at about 76% of their own bottle, docking it for being younger and for the sherry and dried fruit. Across the drinkers of the bottles nearest it, the answers run from $94 to $211. At $646, this week's price sits above all of them: priced for its fans.

The stand-ins — three bottles that give you much of the same evening for noticeably less:

Chivas Regal 18, $125. The nose alone reads like a pencil freshly sharpened over almond slice, vanilla and toffee rounding it out, before malt, dark fudge, leather and raisin warm up by degrees. To a Chivas Regal 25 drinker it gives about 81% of what the 25 does, for 19% of its price.

Royal Salute 21, $260. A top-end blend thick with orchard fruits and a whisper of passion fruit, the oak rounded and supple, a banana note held back until a drop of water releases it. To a Chivas Regal 25 drinker it gives about 76% of what the 25 does, for 40% of its price; it usually sells around $260, and we've seen it between $210 and $260.

Dewar's 18, $131. Lighter and softer in the glass than the others, all toasted barley and buttered toast, heather-honey and raisins rolled in milk chocolate, sweet and creamy despite the modest strength. To a Chivas Regal 25 drinker it gives about 76% of what the 25 does, for 20% of its price, and it usually sells around $131.

So, who walks away with what. If Chivas Regal 25 is already your bottle, nothing here should move you — $646 is what it costs this week, and it tastes like exactly the whisky you came for. If you love the Chivas house but not the quarter-century outlay, the 18 carries most of the same recipe for a small fraction of it. If you want a step up in maturity without going all the way, Royal Salute 21 settles comfortably in between. And if it is the soft, honeyed, after-dinner mood you are chasing rather than the age statement, Dewar's 18 will see you right.