Starward: the honest bottles are the cheap ones

Six Starwards are on the shelf and they fall into two camps. The core range prices fairly: Two-fold is $74, Nova $94, and Unexpeated $75, which actually sits about 15 percent under its peers. The special releases do not: Panettone is $105, and the Solera is $143 against a peer median of $44, more than triple what comparable bottles fetch. There is also a ready-mixed cocktail in the line-up, which is its own thing. The brand's middle price is $85, and the everyday bottles cluster around it while the specials pull away.

Starward is a Melbourne distillery with one big idea: mature Australian single malt in Australian red-wine barrels, the casks its neighbours in the Yarra and Barossa are finished with. That wine-cask influence is the house signature, a soft jammy fruit the model reads across almost every bottle here, and it is what makes a young Starward taste richer than its age suggests. Hold that in mind, because it is what you are really buying at every price.

Start with the core, because it is where the value lives. Two-fold, the double-grain everyday bottle, is $74 against a peer median of $67, about $7 over, roughly 10 percent, close enough to fair to call it honest. Soft red-wine-cask fruit, vanilla, a little spice; the easy weeknight Starward. Nova, the flagship single malt, is $94 against a peer median of $77, about $17 over, roughly 22 percent, with a fuller wine-cask character, apricot and honeysuckle over the jammy fruit. And Unexpeated is $75 against a peer median of $88, about $13 under, roughly 15 percent below comparable bottles, the one the model actually puts under its peers. Fruit, vanilla and spice, the full wine-cask personality without any peat. It is the value pick of the range and a lovely dram on its own terms.

What makes this range easy to recommend is that the wine-cask idea works at the cheap end as well as the dear one. A red-wine barrel does not care what the bottle costs; it gives the same jammy, fruity lift to the everyday Two-fold that it gives to the Solera. So the character you came for is already there in the affordable bottles, and the specials add concentration and a fancier cask rather than a different soul. That is unusual and worth prizing: with a lot of distilleries the good stuff is locked behind the premium tier, whereas here the house style is available for the price of a weeknight pour, and the splurges are genuinely optional.

Now the specials, where the tickets climb. Panettone is $105 against a peer median of $66, about $39 over, roughly 59 percent, a festive dessert-cask release with orange peel and pear over the house fruit, sweet and fun and priced like a treat. The Solera is $143 against a peer median of $44, the widest gap on the shelf by a distance. It is matured in apera casks, the Australian answer to sherry, and it drinks rich and dried-fruited, dried apricot and jammy wine-cask sweetness, the most concentrated wine-cask character of any bottle here. Its peer median sits very low, so the multiple looks enormous, and a specialty solera release has few true comparators, so read that gap as a flag rather than a hard verdict. Even generously, though, it is the dearest way into Starward, and you are paying for the cask programme rather than a keen price.

The sixth bottle is the odd one out: the Old Fashioned Cocktail, a ready-mixed drink in a small bottle at $64, about 52 percent over its peers. It is a convenience product, not a whisky to sip neat, and the premium is for the convenience of not building the cocktail yourself. Worth naming so the shelf makes sense, but not the reason you are standing in front of it.

The shape here is the friendliest of any range this week. The everyday bottles, the ones most people will actually pour, are priced close to their peers or below them, and the value bottle sits right at the front door. The premiums are parked on the special casks, where the character is genuinely different and the buyer usually knows they are splurging. That is exactly the right way round.

So what to buy. For an everyday Australian malt, Two-fold at $74 is honest and unmistakably Starward. For the best value on the shelf, Unexpeated at $75, the one bottle trading under its peers and a fine un-peated wine-cask malt. Step up to Nova if you want the fuller flagship and do not mind a modest premium. The Panettone and the Solera are treats priced like treats; buy them for the occasion and the cask, not the value. And skip the pre-mixed Old Fashioned unless convenience is genuinely the point, because you are paying a clear premium for the shortcut. On balance, this is the shelf where a curious buyer can spend the least and still taste exactly what the distillery is known for, which is more than you can say for most of the ranges around it this week.