Wild Turkey's value sits in its two cheapest bottles

Six Wild Turkeys price cleanly in this build, and all six wear a tag above the going rate for the whiskeys they drink like. The yardstick, bottle by bottle, is the ten drams the model places closest to each on flavour, read at their middle price; I will call that the bottle's room. Sitting a touch over the room is normal for a label this familiar, so the spread is what matters here, not the direction. These tags run from $3 over a room to $97 over one, around a brand median of $75. Read from the bottom up, the shelf makes unusually plain sense.

The floor is where a buyer should look first. Two bottles sit almost on their rooms. The 101 is $70 against a room of $67, and the plain 81-proof in a 700mL is $51 against a room of $48. Three dollars clear in each case, 5% and 7%, the two tightest fits of the lot. Anything dearer than these pulls away from its neighbours fast, and the single barrel at the far end has pulled away for good.

Start a newcomer on the 101. Its $70 is the slimmest gap of the six, and the eight extra points of proof earn their place in the glass: a lead of smoke and cinnamon, butterscotch set beneath, a baking-spice thread that runs on into a clove-tinged close. Three dollars over the going rate buys all of that. Against the cost of a night's drinking it rounds to nothing, and no other bottle gives you a cleaner view of what the distillery is about.

The plain 81-proof is the quieter relation, and it hides a lesson about bottle size inside its price. In the 700mL it is $51, some 7% past its room, and it pours as softly as that number promises: caramel, a little char, a light rye spice laid across the top, no bite to it at all. Decant the very same spirit into a litre, though, and the maths swings hard the other way. That litre reads $79 against a room of $54, roughly 49% over. The whiskey is identical; only the comparison has shifted. A room is assembled from ordinary 700mL bottles, so a litre will always look dear standing next to them. If this easy style is the one you want, the small bottle is the buy, not the big one.

From here the gaps widen, and three bottles each ask a premium you can feel. The Rye is the straightest of them: $75, near 25% over a room of $60, and the most forward pour in the range. It opens spicy and peppery, cinnamon riding under that, before easing into dried fruit with a thread of honey. A quarter over is a real premium, but rye marches to its own drum, and a drinker who wants the pepper rather than the rounder bourbon will call it fair. For anyone else, the 101 beside it is cheaper and the gentler mixer.

The Rare Breed charges for its strength. At $110 it sits about 52% over a room of $73, a barrel-proof release with the devoted following to match. I can say where the model files it, in the same high-rye bourbon company as the rest of the shelf and better than half again above its nearest peers. I will not say how it tastes, because the review notes I lean on do not fix this exact bottling, and inventing a flavour is worse than leaving the line empty.

The Kentucky Spirit marks the ceiling, and it stands a long way up. Its $157 is about $97, close to 164%, over a room of $60, the broadest gap on any Wild Turkey this week. The money buys the house style drawn from one cask and turned up loud: sweet and spicy together, cinnamon and rye, a run of caramel and honey trailing behind. It is a genuinely fine bourbon and a frankly ceremonial one, pitched at better than two and a half times its neighbours. No set of figures sends a drinker here; they come because they want a single barrel for the occasion.

Set end to end, the six make a neat line. A pair hugging their rooms at the bottom, the 101 at 5% and the little 81-proof at 7%. Then the rise, in order: the Rye at 25%, the plain litre stranded at 49% for the sole crime of being a litre, the Rare Breed at 52%, and the Kentucky Spirit off on its own at 164%. Cheap whiskey priced as cheap whiskey, show bottles priced as show bottles, and nothing in the middle posing as an everyday dram while charging premium money. The one thing to watch is the halo, the reflex that the bird on the label guarantees a bargain. This week the label delivers a bargain twice and a hefty bill four times.

The buying, plainly put. If you want the true Wild Turkey and a premium too small to register, reach for the 101 at $70. If the soft everyday pour is all you are after and the name is the appeal, the 81-proof 700mL at $51 is the least-stretched bottle on the shelf, and far kinder to your wallet than the $79 litre holding the identical spirit. Pepper hunters belong with the Rye at $75 and will not begrudge it. The Rare Breed at $110 and the Kentucky Spirit at $157 are for barrel strength and the single-barrel ritual, chosen by drinkers who already know they are paying well over the room and want the bottle regardless.