Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Imagine the scenario: You start your collection from scratch, but your knowledge is as it is today. You’re starting over again.
You decide to start with six bottles and, to give some focus, you’d like one from each region. You walk into a specialist spirits shop with a fully-stocked, wide selection of core range whiskies from all the distilleries. What do you buy? And, of course, how much might it cost?
Look, I know what you’re thinking - the vPub has covered this before. Yes, true. But it was way back in January 2023 and we really restricted ourselves: we were trying to achieve it for £199! Although we succeeded back then, we’d fail today. We can talk about that. But I want to come at this session from a different angle.
Our average bottle price in 2023 was £33 - not bad; especially considering we were insisting on as natural as possible and decent ABV etc. How much would that cost in 2025? Well, we know the answer: more. However, this time, let’s remove some shackles.
What if money and availability were less of a concern? What would we buy if we had free reign and, after the selections are made, how much would it all cost? What would happen to that average bottle price?
I’ll have three lists to share with you.
The first is a ‘no holds barred’ list. This is a ‘dream’ list. The bottles should try to be contemporary core range and official distillery releases. But you want the best from each region. Let’s pretend we’re wealthy and our specialist retailer is fully stocked. Everything is available.
While we’re at it, we’ll stick to our regions but since the Highlands are so vast; we’ll split it into Highlands and Islands. That might help a little. So that’s six bottles.
Then I’ll make and share a list of the same with a target of halving our average bottle price, to get it as low as possible without losing focus on our ‘best of the best’ target.
Finally, I’ll share my own list.
That’s a lot of bottles and a lot of numbers to crunch. But it’s all done. You’ll hopefully be left with a decent selection of bottles that represent what (I personally think) the whisky geeks want, especially when price and availability barriers are removed.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Opening
3:01 - Brief intro to topic
6:19 - Barflies Daftmill Release
7:57 - Independent Spirits Festival 15th March
9:40 - Welcoming in the Lounge
18:56 - A note on Speyburn/AnCnoc Petition
22:44 - A refresher on the original 2023 list
42:30 - The Wish List - no holds barred
1:02:40 - Tobermory 17yo Oloroso
1:16:10 - The Value List - applying rationale
1:40:58 - Ardnamurchan Madeira Batch 2
1:59:26 - The Roy List - somewhere in between
2:22:22 - Benromach Contrasts Virgin Oak
2:37:32 - In summary
2:43:41 - Quiz at the End
Links:
Tickets for Independent Spirits Festival independentspirits.co.uk
Original vPub List from 2023: youtube.com/live/K_1JmATAuQw?si=GdfsAsuwtroA646f
Speyburn/AnCnoc petition: https://chng.it/XwzPnwwVrc
Imagine the scenario: You start your collection from scratch, but your knowledge is as it is today. You’re starting over again.
You decide to start with six bottles and, to give some focus, you’d like one from each region. You walk into a specialist spirits shop with a fully-stocked, wide selection of core range whiskies from all the distilleries. What do you buy? And, of course, how much might it cost?
Look, I know what you’re thinking - the vPub has covered this before. Yes, true. But it was way back in January 2023 and we really restricted ourselves: we were trying to achieve it for £199! Although we succeeded back then, we’d fail today. We can talk about that. But I want to come at this session from a different angle.
Our average bottle price in 2023 was £33 - not bad; especially considering we were insisting on as natural as possible and decent ABV etc. How much would that cost in 2025? Well, we know the answer: more. However, this time, let’s remove some shackles.
What if money and availability were less of a concern? What would we buy if we had free reign and, after the selections are made, how much would it all cost? What would happen to that average bottle price?
I’ll have three lists to share with you.
The first is a ‘no holds barred’ list. This is a ‘dream’ list. The bottles should try to be contemporary core range and official distillery releases. But you want the best from each region. Let’s pretend we’re wealthy and our specialist retailer is fully stocked. Everything is available.
While we’re at it, we’ll stick to our regions but since the Highlands are so vast; we’ll split it into Highlands and Islands. That might help a little. So that’s six bottles.
Then I’ll make and share a list of the same with a target of halving our average bottle price, to get it as low as possible without losing focus on our ‘best of the best’ target.
Finally, I’ll share my own list.
That’s a lot of bottles and a lot of numbers to crunch. But it’s all done. You’ll hopefully be left with a decent selection of bottles that represent what (I personally think) the whisky geeks want, especially when price and availability barriers are removed.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Opening
3:01 - Brief intro to topic
6:19 - Barflies Daftmill Release
7:57 - Independent Spirits Festival 15th March
9:40 - Welcoming in the Lounge
18:56 - A note on Speyburn/AnCnoc Petition
22:44 - A refresher on the original 2023 list
42:30 - The Wish List - no holds barred
1:02:40 - Tobermory 17yo Oloroso
1:16:10 - The Value List - applying rationale
1:40:58 - Ardnamurchan Madeira Batch 2
1:59:26 - The Roy List - somewhere in between
2:22:22 - Benromach Contrasts Virgin Oak
2:37:32 - In summary
2:43:41 - Quiz at the End
Links:
Tickets for Independent Spirits Festival independentspirits.co.uk
Original vPub List from 2023: youtube.com/live/K_1JmATAuQw?si=GdfsAsuwtroA646f
Speyburn/AnCnoc petition: https://chng.it/XwzPnwwVrc
