In New South Wales whisky, the entry bottle is the value

New South Wales is one of the youngest corners of this whole shelf. Archie Rose distils in inner Sydney, Manly Spirits works out on the northern beaches, and both have been making whisky for barely a decade, in small batches, at a scale a century-old Scottish operation would call a rounding error. Four of their bottles are here this week, a middle price near $142, running from $69 up to $206. Every one the model can rank cleanly sits above the crowd of whiskies nearest it in flavour. The good news is that the smallest gap belongs to the cheapest bottle.

Start there. Manly's Coastal Stone Xplore is a blended Australian whisky at $69, about 21% over the roughly $57 that its ten nearest run, and it is the gentlest premium on the shelf. It drinks well above its tag too: peach and apricot and crisp apple, a floral top note, a thread of chocolate underneath to give it some weight. For a bottle under seventy dollars from a young distillery it is a genuinely likeable everyday pour, and the one I would hand someone curious about what New South Wales is making without asking them to spend big.