Dalwhinnie sits in a gap in the hills at Drumochter Pass and is the coldest inhabited place in Britain with a weather station to prove it. The 15 Year Old is $79.99 at 43% alcohol - 86 proof - and it is one of only three bottles in our forty-one strong Scotch collection that records a hechsher on the listing. What a Highland malt is, why the altitude and the cold matter over fifteen years, why the smoke in it is a kiss rather than a wall, and what else eighty dollars buys on the malt shelf.

Nearly every single malt in Scotland is distilled twice. Auchentoshan runs the spirit through three times, which is an Irish habit more than a Scottish one, and it is the whole reason this whisky is light, clean and soft instead of heavy and oily. American Oak is $39.99 for the 750ml, matured only in ex-bourbon barrels, which is where the vanilla and coconut come from. The last working Lowland distillery of the old guard, sitting at Clydebank on the edge of Glasgow. How to say the name, what Dark Oak and Virgin Oak and Blood Oak actually mean, how it sits against a Speyside and an Islay malt, and why this is the bottle to hand somebody who thinks they do not like single malt.

Macallan 18 is a Speyside single malt aged eighteen years in sherry-seasoned oak only, bottled at 43 percent, $449.99. Dried fruit, chocolate and clove, dense and very long. Why the sherry casks cost what they do, how it differs from the 12, and three sherried alternatives from $59.99 if the price is the problem.