1/If you want a blend that sits close to what its own peers reckon it's worth, look at the big litre bottles. Ballantine's Finest 1L at $69 lands dead on its CE 360° jury — zero premium, the fairest ticket on the whole blended shelf this Thursday.
2/The rest of the fair end keeps that shape. Johnnie Walker Red Label in the 1.125L at $77, then the plain litre at $69, both a bit over a quarter of a percent above their own juries. Cutty Sark at $59. Proper No. Twelve litre at $91 rounds out the hot pack.
3/Widen the frame and the floor holds: sixty-two blends, every one priced live this week. Scotch, Irish, Japanese, a couple of Australians — the lot, end to end, no curated subset.
4/Reads the way a blend reads. Vanilla and toffee up front, grain underneath, a little smoke, honey and orchard apple. Nothing showy. That's rather the job of a blend.
5/The cold end is where I'd slow down, and the surprise is that the widest gap isn't the dearest bottle. McConnell's Belfast at $81 sits about 40% over its own jury — a live ticket, not a stale one, but a big gap on a cheap bottle, so treat the size warily.
6/Then the trophies do the usual work. Chivas Regal 25 at $646 (about 22% over), Midleton Very Rare at $412 (also 22%), Hibiki Blossom Harmony at $691 (near 22%) and Hibiki Japanese Harmony 2021 at $730 (near 20%).
7/So the tidy read: fair value on the blended shelf lives in the everyday litres, and the premium climbs with the trophy names — with one cheap Irish outlier carrying the steepest gap of all. Weeknight pour, the $69 Ballantine's litre or the $59 Cutty Sark?
2026-09-10-replay/whole-shelf/blended-whisky-style-d461f2, vintage 2026-09-10.r. Gap basis: percentage (grounding.gap_basis).None recorded.
Whole Shelf, scope Blended (whisky_style), vintage 2026-09-10.r (pack whisky_style-blended-aggregate.json). Gap basis: percentage — read from the aggregate as stored (max/min price ratio ≥ 2, and this shelf runs $50.99–$730.00). Coverage: 62 of 62 members priced live in the 2026-09-10 harvest (100%). ce_gap_pct = (price − ce_360_mean) / price × 100, each bottle's premium over its own CE 360° consensus; 'hot' is the smallest premium (closest to fair value, not a discount), 'cold' the largest. Sources holds the aggregate's stored top/bottom cut, not every member's gap.
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