On the Lagavulin shelf, even the cheapest runs dear

Three expressions share the shelf, and here is the uncomfortable part: there is no entry point. The cheapest Lagavulin still sits a quarter over the whiskies the model shelves beside it, and the dearest sits more than twice over. The brand median lands at $127. On a lot of shelves the baby bottle is the smart way in. Not here.

The famous one first. Lagavulin 16-year-old is $189, standing about 128% over the roughly $83 its ten closest neighbours cost. That is the widest premium of the three by a street, and it is close to the widest on the whole Islay shelf. The whisky earns its following: iodine and rich peat, caramel sweetness folded through, a wash of sherry and a clean note of the sea. The model loads it harder on peat than almost anything in its room. None of which is the argument. The argument is that the badge, not the smoke, is doing most of the work in that number, because the ten bottles the engine rates as its flavour kin are selling for less than half the money.

The 11-year-old Sweet Peat is $165, about 57% over the $105 its neighbourhood fetches. There is no published tasting note to lean on for this one, so take nothing on flavour here beyond what the model reads, and what it reads is a heavily peated malt in the Lagavulin mould. The number, though, is plain enough: a middle bottle priced like a trophy, a long way over the company it keeps.

Then the 8-year-old, and it is the closest thing to sense in the range. At $127 it runs about 25% over the $102 its neighbours ask. Still a premium, but a modest one by this distillery's standards, and the whisky is a genuinely different proposition: lighter, mineral and salty, a sweet edge over clean peat smoke rather than the thick, oily weight of the 16. It is the Lagavulin for a warm evening rather than a cold one, and the only one here you could call fairly priced without stretching the word.

How to buy it comes down to what you are paying for. If the 16 is the bottle you have always meant to own, buy it with your eyes open: it is a superb whisky and the steepest premium on the shelf, and both of those are true at once. If you want the distillery's character without the trophy tax, the 8 at $127 is the pick, lighter and saltier and far nearer to fair. The 11 sits awkwardly between them, priced like the icon and aged like the entry. On value alone it is the one to walk past.

Peat sells, and no distillery sells it harder than this one. The catch is that on the Lagavulin shelf there is nowhere to stand that is not above the line.