Quote:
Originally Posted by Berge20
What's the best way to go about trying more costly bottlings of single malt scotch?
Either go to a bar that has a good selection and try a few different whiskies there, or take the plunge and just buy a bottle. If you're buying a highly priced bottle of scotch, then I think you're going to be very unlucky to get it home and find that you don't like it.
The best thing to do though to avoid any disasters is to buy a more expensive bottling of a whisky that you have already tried and liked, because then at least you will be acquainted with the basic style of the whisky.
The two most common things that make a whisky more expensive than the standard bottling are a longer maturation period, or a maturation in a different type of cask (sherry, wine, port etc...). Longer maturation generally results in a smoother, more complex whisky, while a whisky that has been finished in a different cask has flavours added to the whisky from whatever was in the cask previous.
Knowing that you like sweeter whiskies, I think a good starting point for you would be the Distillers Editions that are produced by all the distilleries owned by Diageo. They take the standard whisky that would normally be bottled and sold as the distillery standard bottling, but they finish it off for around 6 months in a sherry/port/wine cask. It adds a bit to the price, but nothing ridiculous (probably around +50%) and it's a good starting point to discover something past the standard bottlings.
You've said that you like Dalwhinnie, so you can't really go wrong if you try to get hold of a bottle of this:
It costs around £45 here, so I would imagine that you'd be looking at around $80-100 in the US.