You said cheap, right? Well, if you like the blended Chivas Regal, you’ll find Usher’s has the same smoothness. 1.75 L of Usher’s costs about half what you’ll pay for 750 ml of Chivas.
You may enjoy Ardbeg 10, which tastes like chewing on a bandaid (in a good way).
I’m not sure that Talisker is considered a highland malt. Even if it is (and I have my doubts), what’s far more important is that it’s from Skye (as you said). Hence, its taste is much more ‘typical’ for an island malt - peaty, sharp, iodine-like (salty), and (IMHO) almost ‘medicinal’.
OTOH, Oban is much more mellow, complex, smooth, and satisfying.
You may find these of some interest:
I don’t disagree with you about Talisker’s qualities; I’m going by my own impressions of Oban and Talisker, and the classification given by Jackson. Certainly Talisker tastes more like a Highland/Islay hybrid, but I do find shades of this in Oban as well.
Thanks for the sites.
I totally agree with you. Glenlivet is my favorite cheap single malt. However, I’ve heard the same comments against Glenfiddich leveled against Glenlivet, so this is truly a case where YMMV. Try both, see what you like. They both have very different flavor profiles. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Glenfiddich, but I remember it being peaty compared to the gentle Speyside Glenlivet.
And, to tell you the truth, if I want to go really cheap and still have enjoy my drink, I do like the Grouse.
I picked up a bottle of 10 yr Glenmorangie, pretty nice, not very peaty nor a lot of oak. But pleasant. It ran me $40. CDN. Relatively cheap, but over my budget. What the hell, Christmas only comes once a year. We’ll just ignore the other $200 worth of wine and spirits picked up too… 
BTW the Dalwhinnie under the tree has been a huge success with Mrs. Prefect.
Congratulations!
I save out $10-20 a month so I can buy a bottle of something nice every few months. You might want to look at a copy of this for your future tasting pleasure. You may disagree with some of his ratings, but it’s clear that this guy loves every aspect of Scotch.
I read this as “You may disagree with some of his rantings,” and didn’t think twice.
I’m a scotch snob. Not that I’ll want to be (I can drink other sorts of rotgut, but not scotch).
I don’t know why this is so, because I used to be able to stomach The Clan Snot at $19.99, but not these days. There is something in cheap scotch that makes me want to gag. Sure, I did the usual progression from bourbon to scotch in my early twenties, dismissing bourbon as an overly-sweet kids’ drink, but these days, at 36, if I want a cheap whisk(e)y, then I’ll just go for a Jim Beam or Cougar. For a mid-priced scotch, I’ll go for The Cutty Sark or J&B, or any other of the pale ones designed for export to the American black market during prohibition. But for me to enjoy a traditional scotch, it has to be top shelf, preferably single malt (but I can enjoy a good blend). I like a good peat taste too.
I know little or nothing about top shelf American whiskies - in fact I don’t think I’ve ever tried one.
But no, I can no longer drink cheap scotch. I gag on it.
Huh. I consider these to be in the “cheap scotch” category. Makes me wonder what kind of stuff the real bottom shelf is, then.
Cutty Sark is the kind of stuff that gets offered in cheap pub promos, but there is another level below that - stuff which has been laid down for the minimum permissable time of three years and is found in Lidl and suchlike for roughly 14 US dollars a bottle. I can’t imagine what that shit tastes like. If you need cheap alky thrills at that price point, vodka is a better bet.
I’d put Talisker, Lagavulin and Laphroagh into a category of their own.
They are not replacements for anything else. They are miraculous creations. They should never again be mentioned in a thread with the word ‘cheap’ in its title.
In my own very honest opinion, of course
Yipes. Actually, here in the US there actually is palatable whiskey at that price point, although it’s not whisky from your part of the world. Ryes used to dominate the market before bourbons complete overtook American tastes. Because of that, there’s only a few distilleries left that make it, and even the “bottom-shelf” distilleries put out a decent product. I can get a fifth of Old Overholt rye for $12.99 at the local liquor superstore and it’s a drink I actually enjoy straight up. And there’s no better way to make an Old Fashioned then with the whiskey designed to go with it: rye.
Those are about A$25 to A$30. What’s that, about US20-25, I think… Those are drinkable, but not great. The real cheapies are around A$20, and are bottled in Australia, coming out here in dirty great tanks of the stuff. I’ve even heard they add caramel to it for the colouring. Carlton Club, The Clan Scot (The Clan Snot), even the Black Douglas just creeps in there sometimes. When I was working in a liquor store, I was told that the weekly brand of el cheapo scotch we’d have on sale was actually one of six different local brandings of the same bulk disinfectant shipped out from Scotland. Vile, vile stuff, and it really has something gagging about it.
I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve tried the lowest of the low vodka, and I didn’t even get to the gagging stage. I just couldn’t put that shit in my mouth. It’s so oily that comparing it to diesel fuel isn’t hyperbole. You can actually see the oiliness in the bottle. There is a reason why true down-and-out alcoholics don’t tend to drink spirits. If you’ve got twenty bucks on you and you want to blot out the world to the point of forgetting your own name, even the worst of the worst wine-inna-box is more palatable than cheap spirits, and you can get eight litres of it for A$20, which at 10%alcohol by volume is a much better bet than 700ml of 37.5%alc/vol stuff that you can’t even keep down. With this in mind, I’m not quite sure what the $20 scotch demographic actually is.
The poison of choice in these parts is industrial cider, usually called “White - something”. The shop along the road from me sell 2 litres of “White Storm” for 1.70 pounds, and it’s 8% volume. I don’t think we’ve got any kind of wine that comes in at the sort of price you can get in Australia.
I used to get my grass in a pub in a nearby town (post-industrial hellhole at the time) that had strippers in on a Saturday afternoon, along with the dealers. A popular cocktail in the place was the Carlsberg Special Brew and White Lightning snakebite. The barstaff seemed pleasantly surprised whenever anyone ordered something as mundane as a pint of Guinness.
Cheap Scotch? Don’t even think in terms of Glenlivet or any single-malt. Try Clan MacGregor. It’s not bad and you can get it for $13 a bottle.
Missed this one for awhile. I blame expensive Scotch.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
Well I took your advice, and now am a proud owner of a bottle of Ardbeg. It costs more than Laphroiag, even, but then cost is no object within reason.
Cool. Let us know what you think. I’ve got a new Aberlour 15 to try.