On Islay, the special editions carry the widest markups

That is not the order you would guess. Islay is the island of smoke, and smoke, as a rule, is dear. The shelf's middle sits at $112, with seventeen bottles running from $75 up to $150. But rank them by how far each strays from the drams it tastes like, rather than by the tag alone, and the pattern flips what you expect. The plain entry peats behave. The quarter-cask and the sweet-finished bottlings, the ones sold as a step up, open the widest gaps of all. It is a useful reminder that on Islay the name on the label and the age on the box are not what move the price most. What moves it is the story the bottling tells, the cask it was finished in or the strength it was filled at, and those stories carry the steepest tolls on the shelf.

The measure is the same one the shelf pieces always use. Each bottle is lined up against the ten the model reads as nearest it in flavour, near-enough the same weight of peat and brine, and the middle of those ten prices is the comparison. It is the going rate for that style of smoke, read off this week's shelf. It is not a ruling on the whisky. When a bottle clears that figure it is simply asking more than the comparable Islay drams around it.

Laphroaig Quarter Cask opens the widest of the lot. It is $170 against about $88 for its ten nearest, roughly 93% over, close to double. The whisky earns some words, at least: tar and ash, oily and sweet, a grainy backbone under the smoke. The quarter-cask maturation does give it an extra push of wood and intensity over the standard bottling. What it does not give it is a price anywhere near the peated malts the model shelves beside it. This is the clearest case on the island of paying up for a bottling story.

Lagavulin 11 Sweet Peat is the next-widest, and a quieter kind of expensive. At $165 it sits about 54% over the $107 of its ten closest. This is a finished, sweetened take on the Lagavulin house profile rather than the famous flagship, and its own reviews are too thin to quote, so I will stay with what the model can see: a peat-and-maritime core with a sherried, dried-fruit edge layered on. A special release wearing a famous name, tagged well clear of its neighbourhood. If you want Lagavulin, its familiar flagship is the known quantity; this is the collector's shelf talking.

Caol Ila 12 is the establishment malt here and carries a middling premium. It is $138, about 29% over the $107 of its ten nearest. It drinks lighter than its island reputation: lemon and a floral lift, allspice, an oily body, a surprising touch of pineapple, fish and brine holding it to Islay. Balance rather than brute smoke, and the shelf charges about a third over its company for it. Dear, but you can hear what you are paying for. On a shelf where the loud bottles shout, it is the quiet, balanced one that holds up best to a second and a third pour.

Smokehead High Voltage is the odd one in the middle. At $127 it is about 51% over the roughly $84 of its ten nearest, a wide gap for a no-age-statement bottle. It is the cranked-up Smokehead: dried fruit and pepper, medicinal iodine, a caramel-and-toffee sweetness under a wall of peat. Big, brash and bottled at strength. Fun, if that is your weather. Priced like a serious malt all the same, and well over the drams it keeps company with.

Then the two that quietly do the right thing. The standard Smokehead is $82, only about 15% over the $71 of its neighbourhood, the closest bottle on this shelf to its band. It is the uncomplicated one: toffee and apple, charcoal and ash, a peppery anise bite. House peat, honestly priced. Laphroaig Select is almost as tidy, at $84 against about $72, roughly 17% over. Select is the gentle Laphroaig, soft peat smoke and iodine with a cool ashy edge, the easiest way into the distillery's style. Of the six, these two give you island smoke for the smallest step over what comparable bottles cost. Neither is trying to be a landmark dram. Both are simply well-made island whisky at a price that does not insult the drams beside them, which on this shelf is rarer than it ought to be.

So, by what you are after. If you want to meet Islay without overpaying, the standard Smokehead and Laphroaig Select are the tidiest buys on the shelf, both tagged close to their company and both honest peat for the money. If you want a balanced, grown-up Islay malt and will pay for it, Caol Ila 12 is the one, dear but legible. And if you are drawn to the special bottlings, the Quarter Cask and the Sweet Peat are the wide-gap buys here, close to double and half again over their neighbourhoods. Good whisky, both. Just know you are paying the edition premium, not the smoke.