Is it worth the price?
AILSA BAY is a Lowland single malt Scotch from the Ailsa Bay distillery, released without an age statement. Tasters score it 4.8 out of 5 across 12 reviews. It is tracked at 4 retailers, ranging from €69.95 to €77.00, while the valuation model estimates a fair price of around €101.45. That is 0.75× the model estimate — well below what its age, strength and house predict, and one of the clearer value picks in the data. The estimate is fitted on age, bottling strength and the distillery's other prices; community ratings add no measurable signal to it, so this is not a quality judgement. Typical error is around ±65%, so read the verdict as indicative and trust it most at the extremes.
Retailers tracked
| Retailer | Price |
|---|---|
| topdrinks | €69.95 |
| thewhiskyshop | €74.38 |
| whisky.fr | €76.90 |
| whiskylodge | €77.00 |
How we got this number
The valuation model predicts a price from this bottling's inputs. The multiple is the actual market price divided by that prediction.
- Rating
- 4.75 / 5
- Age
- No age statement
- Region
- Lowland
- Distillery tier
- Mid Label only — set from the distillery’s median price, not used by the model.
- Predicted price
- €101.45
- Actual price (median)
- €75.64
- Multiple
- 0.75×
- Verdict band
- hidden gem (≤ 0.80×)
Methodology estimate
The deterministic model from methodology.md: production cost per litre × bottle size, plus maturation cost per year, plus a cask premium, times an ABV factor — then multiplied by a quality grade summed across six 0–3 axes.
- Production (€0.10/cl × 70 cl)
- €7.00
- Maturation (NAS→5 × €1.20/year)
- €6.92
- Cask premium (undeclared)
- +€0.00
- × ABV factor
- ×1.22
- Cost floor
- €17.02
NAS treated as 5 years for maturation cost (paper convention).
- Process distinctnessno declared distinctive practices2 / 3
- Cask provenancecask type not declared on bottle0 / 3
- Bottling integrity48.9% ABV; non-chill-filtered inferred from ABV; E150a caramel colouring not disclosed2 / 3
- OwnershipWilliam Grant & Sons — independent or smaller group2 / 3
- Heritagefounded 2009 (17 years of operation)1 / 3
- Reputation4.75/5 across 12 reviews2 / 3
- Quality score
- 9 / 18
- Quality multiplier
- ×1.75
- Intrinsic value
- €29.78
- Actual price (median)
- €75.64
- Multiple
- 2.54×
- Verdict band
- brand premium
The two models disagree sharply here. The deal-score regression learns from peer prices that age and brand command €101.45 (0.75× the listed price), while the cost-and-quality methodology floors the bottle at €29.78 (2.54×). The gap is the brand premium the market pays beyond what materials, maturation and bottling integrity alone can justify.
Maturation context
Lowland · rolling 12 months: 1,366 mm at Penwhapple Reservoir (6 km). Scotland W rolling 12-month rainfall2,451 mm, +33.70% vs 1995-2024 median.