The Glen Moray You Reach For Might Be the 18

So that's the spine of it. Same hands, younger, and almost all of the experience.

Back to the glass in front of you. The 21 noses like oolong and ripe red fruit, with a thin ribbon of Tawny Port laid over the top and small, quiet waves of baking spice coming up behind. There's caramel and oak in there too, sweet turning tart, summer berries and vanilla, a hint of honey before more of that oak. The palate is medium and rich, creamy, sweet, honeyed. It isn't a loud whisky. It's one you sit with.

If you want that character for less, two bottles do the job.

The Glen Moray 18 is the obvious one, $164. Melon and apricot, apple pie à la mode, dried hay, and a backbone of peppery fruit and malt. Warm and rounded rather than big. To a Glen Moray 21 drinker it gives about 95% of what the 21 does, for 54% of its price. It usually sells around $164.

The Glenlivet 18 is the other, $170 for members. You'd know it was Glenlivet blind: fruit and flowers, the flowers dried and heathery, the fruit tinned pineapple and windfall apples, a cedar and nutmeg note adding complexity, custard tart on the tongue before the autumn fruit arrives. To a Glen Moray 21 drinker it gives about 88% of what the 21 does, for 56% of its price.

Now, what to pay for the 21 itself. It's $304 for members at Dan Murphy's this week. From what we've seen it usually sells around $343, in a band that runs $304 to $343. So this week sits at the lower end of its own usual range. As a price guide, not an alarm: that works out to about $11.89 a pour at home, with roughly 26 standard drinks in the bottle. The 18, for comparison, is about $6.29 a pour.

Here's the one figure people find odd, said plainly. Ask the drinkers of the bottles closest to the Glen Moray 21 what the 21 is worth to them, each starting from what they pay for their own bottle, and the answers run from $76 to $415. At $304 for members, the 21 sits inside that spread. The reason the figures land where they do is the one the numbers give: every drinker of a nearby bottle who shares the 21's flavours puts it at nine-tenths or more of their own. The closer the match, the closer their figure to the price. Nobody's reaching.

Who's it for, then.

If the Glen Moray 21 is already your bottle, nothing here talks you out of it; $304 for members is this week's price, and the whisky is exactly the sit-with dram described above.

If you like the 21 but would rather keep some change in your pocket, the Glen Moray 18 is the answer at $164 — same distillery, same soft Speyside character, 95% of the way there.

And if you came in through Glenlivet, the Glenlivet 18 at $170 gives you that fruit-and-flowers house style at 88% of the 21, which is plenty to settle in for the winter with.

A practical line to close: if you're at Dan Murphy's this week with the 21 in your hand, the 18 one cabinet over does nearly all of it for a good deal less — worth a glance before you commit.