The Shinobu blend is the floor; the 10-year doubles its room

Four Shinobus carry a finding, and the brand midpoint is $120. None of the four sits below the whiskies the model rates as its flavour company. The closest to sense is still a little over, and the dearest runs at more than double. So the question for Shinobu is not where the bargain is, because there is not one. It is how much of the mizunara character you want, and how much you are willing to pay above the going rate to get it.

Begin with the floor. The Shinobu Blended is $110, about 10% over the roughly $100 its neighbours cost, the mildest premium in the range by a distance. The review notes on it are thin, really just grain and a note of mizunara, so I will not pretend to a full tasting; what the model reads is a light, grain-led whisky with a thread of that Japanese-oak incense running underneath. It is the entry point, and at only a touch over its company it is the one Shinobu I would hand someone curious about the style without feeling I had to apologise for the price.

The Pure Malt, the no-age-statement malt, is $147, about 47% over the roughly $100 its neighbours fetch. Here the mizunara moves to the front: the model reads it as led by that incense-and-sandalwood character, deeper than the blend and more obviously the house signature. The published words are again sparse, grain and mizunara and little else, so the glass goes largely undocumented and you are buying the oak and the idea. At nearly half again over its flavour company, it is a step up in both the wood and the ask.

The 10 Year Old is where restraint leaves the building. At $198 it runs about 122% over the roughly $89 its neighbours cost, more than double, the widest gap by far on this shelf. It carries the strongest mizunara reading of the four, with a green, citrus-tea lift alongside, and on paper it should be the most complete whisky Shinobu makes. But the review notes are as thin as its siblings', grain and mizunara, so what justifies the price in the glass is largely unrecorded. More than double its flavour company is a steep thing to ask on an age statement and a reputation, and little else that a taster has written down.

The Lightly Peated is the most interesting drinker and, mercifully, the best documented. At $151 it is about 30% over the roughly $116 its neighbours cost, the second-mildest premium here. And it has a real description behind it: rich and sweet, tropical fruit and peach, with a light dusting of peat and smoke laid over the mizunara base. That combination, the incense of Japanese oak with a soft coastal smoke, is genuinely distinctive, and of the four it is the one where you can taste what the premium is for rather than infer it.

Put the four together and the pattern is a straight line from the blend upward: the more mizunara and the more age, the further over its company the bottle sits, from a modest tenth to well past double. That is the Japanese-oak premium made visible, and on this shelf it is unusually steep even by the standards of Japanese whisky.

So, buying. If you want to meet the mizunara style without overpaying, the Blended at $110 is the sane entry, barely over its company and the only one that is. If you want the character with something you can actually taste described, the Lightly Peated at $151 is the pick of the range: the incense-and-smoke combination is the most distinctive thing Shinobu does, and the premium is the gentlest among the malts. The Pure Malt at $147 is for someone set on the undiluted oak signature and content to buy it a little blind. And the 10 Year Old at $198 is the one to pause over: more than double its flavour company, with almost nothing written down about the glass to carry the price. Admire it on the shelf; think hard before you carry it to the counter.