1/Two whiskies at their own floor this week, and the shelf's oddest near-miss. Proper No. Twelve, the Irish blend, is $59. The Chita, Suntory's Japanese grain whisky, is $99, down from the $111 it carried in mid-September. Both plain shelf tickets, neither a members' deal.

2/Why they sit side by side: the profile model reads them as close kin. On make-up The Chita and Proper No. Twelve land in nearly the same spot, a cosine of 0.97. An Irish blend and a Japanese grain whisky, one broadly shared character.

3/The value model does not buy it. On worth-for-money it rates the two nowhere near each other. So take this as shared profile, not equal standing: different countries, different styles, one surprising overlap in the glass.

4/Put them together and the pair is $158, the cheapest the combination has been across the weeks I've tracked it; its usual sits near $168. Both bottles are at the low end of their own range right now. A bundle, if you want the two.