Bunnahabhain 12 is fair only at the member price

Two bottles carry the name this week, and the brand's mid-shelf sits around $118, which is not cheap for what many drinkers think of as the soft option. The trap here is that both bottles look dear against their nearest neighbours. The escape from the trap, on one of them, is a members' card. Read the tags without it and Bunnahabhain looks overpriced. Read them with it and one of the two becomes a genuinely fair buy.

Start with the 12 Year Old, because it is the one the discount rescues. The shelf tag is $128, and the model puts comparable bottles at a median of $100. On paper that is about $28 over the going rate, roughly 28 percent, which would make it a hard sell. But there is a member offer running, and it knocks the bottle back to around $108. At that price the gap shrinks to about $8 over its peers, call it 8 percent, which is near enough fair for a sherried Islay 12. Same whisky, two very different verdicts, and the only variable is whether you scanned a card at the till. In the glass it earns the attention either way: smoke and peat threaded through a rich butterscotch-and-sherry sweetness, a meaty depth underneath, an iodine tang to remind you which island you are on. This is peat for people who like their smoke upholstered.

The catch is that the $128 is the number on the tag, and the $108 is the number you only get if you qualify for it. If you are not a member, the honest read is the first one: you are paying a clear premium over comparable bottles for the Bunnahabhain style. If you are, the second read applies and the bottle quietly becomes one of the more sensible sherried malts in its price bracket. Best to work out which shopper you are before you decide whether this is a bargain or a browse.

It is instructive to see the crowd the 12 keeps. Its nearest matches run from Laphroaig 10 at $97 up through the sherried Tamdhu 12 at $126 and on to the dearer Islays. At the full $128 shelf tag the Bunnahabhain sits near the top of that group. At the $108 member price it drops below the middle of it, cheaper than most of the bottles the model calls its kin. That is the whole story of this bottle in a line: the card is the difference between paying over the odds and paying under them.

The Stiuireadair sits alongside it as the brand's no-age-statement introduction, and it tells the harder version of the same story. It is $115, and the whiskies the model rates closest to it carry a median of just $66. That is about $49 dearer than its neighbours, roughly 76 percent over, and there is no member offer softening the blow this week. Now, that number reads more brutal than it drinks. The Stiuireadair keeps very cheap company, so a modest premium in dollars becomes an eye-watering one in percent. It is still a lovely dram, softly sherried with chocolate and a gentle peat, the easy everyday face of the distillery. But you are paying a real premium for that gentleness, and its own cohort offers similar softness for a good deal less.

Put the two together and the brand's character comes into focus. Bunnahabhain trades on being the approachable, sherried, well-mannered Islay, and it charges for the manners. Neither bottle is priced to undercut its room. The difference is that the 12 has a lever you can pull to bring it back into line, and the Stiuireadair does not. That is the practical distinction a buyer actually needs, more than any tasting note.

There is a wrinkle in the 12's numbers, and it is worth being plain about it at the end rather than burying it. The model reads the bottle against the discounted price it has been carrying, not the full shelf tag, which is why its own value verdict is gentle where the sticker looks steep. I have quoted both so you can see the join.

So what do you buy. If you hold the relevant membership, the Bunnahabhain 12 at around $108 is the pick of the pair and a fair price for a genuinely good sherried Islay: reach for it when you want smoke that has been softened rather than sharpened. If you do not, treat the 12 as a full-price treat rather than a value buy, and know that the Stiuireadair, for all its charm, is asking well over the odds against its own kind this week. And if it is the soft, sherried side of Islay you are after in general, both bottles deliver it beautifully; the question is only ever what you pay for the comfort, and here the answer depends more on your wallet's paperwork than on the whisky.