JW Blue price variance.

I cannot speak for Canadian prices but here in the Uk JW Blue can vary from £140 to £190. For a standard distillery bottling this seems strange to me. It may be down to how and when it gets purchased. I think it gets bought a lot as a prestigious present, an extravagent gesture if you will. I know a lot of seasoned whisky drinkers avoid it because they don't believe it is worth the money. I am yet to try it myself, although everytime I look at it the hyperbole very nearly draws me in.

I too have seen such pricing here in the US. I've also seen it bottled at 40% and 43%.

Boardsy, you should try it. It's not the best, but it certainly isn't bad. It's become a famous part of whisky history for better or for worse. There's no shame in getting sucked into to some marketing every once in a while.

Being in Ontario, the price is kept at $250 a bottle...on the bright side, I don't think it has gone up in price in the past year! :)

At that price, along with the 'it's good...but not at that price' sentiment that seems common, I will likely limit my JW Blue experience to splurging on a dram at $25 (moving the decimal one spot to the left from the LCBO bottle price, does seem to be a good gauge of a reasonably priced dram, at least outside of the Greater Toronto Area) at some point, just to say that I've tried it.

@Dellnola I would agree with that, altho Pudge72 has got the right idea with buying a dram, if thats an option. I was lucky enough to get a bottle on a ridiculously good sale duty free, but at regular prices, I think I would rather get a bottle of JW Green, and a bottle of Ardbeg, and a bottle of Aberlour, all for about the same as, or less than, the price of the Blue. Its better than Green, in my opinion, but not by much.

Same story here Peatpete. I got my bottle of JW blue on a cruise for cheap. Glad I did it, won't do it again.

@Peatpete, I haven't shopped whisky in Alberta, so I don't know how the land is laid out. I know that it's not a provincial monopoly system as in Ontario and Quebec, so I guess that it is a closer situation to that in the US, where in many jurisdictions there is a laissez-faire free for all. If so, what I see in the US is that most stores look to sell volume and quickly, and thus work on relatively moderate profit margins, leading to a modest range of pricing for a given whisk(e)y. There are, though, some luxury-oriented vendors, usually in high-rent districts, that do much higher mark-ups, on almost all products. Sometimes these luxury dealers market service, such as delivery, or competence at finding and procuring hard-to-get products, as part of their higher pricing model. In my area, the DC area, there are three different models operating at the same time. DC and all of Maryland except Montgomery County are laissez-faire, with some competitively priced liquor vendors and some luxury ones. Virginia is a state-controlled monopoly with one price fits all: usually a mid-range, but not inexpensive price. Variety can be limited in Virginia. Montgomery County Maryland, where I live, has its own Department of Liquor Control with 24 stores serving 940,000 souls. There is one price fits all, usually an excellent price, relatively speaking.

On the price of JW Blue: it was on sale here (MC) 2 months ago for $ 163.50, including tax. It could easily cost $ 250 at one of the luxury stores.

On the quality of JW Blue, I have only consumed it on others' nickels. I was very pleasantly surprised and liked it a lot, but it is very very subtle, and you have to like that sort of thing to fully enjoy it. I liked it best of the JW series, but not by very much, and would certainly take 2 1/2 bottles of JW Gold or 4 bottles of JW Green in preference to 1 bottle of JW Blue, for the same money.

@Victor What you say certainly makes sense in bigger cities, but I have found this price variation in the town closest to where I live, which has a population of only 3,500, and i have noticed it in towns that lie between where I live and the closest city, most of them small country towns. Thats why I brought it up, because in these small towns competition is enough to keep the prices of everything else pretty comprable, and yet the massive difference remains with the Blue. I guess I should just go into a bottle shop and ask next time I go to town!

It is interesting to note that pretty much everyone seems to have the same opinion of Blue, and the question of its relative value.

I've tried the JW Blue. It's good. Not worth the money. Green is better... but honestly... when I am in the mood for a blend, I am happy enough with the Black Label (and for the record, I don't really count Compass Box expressions as blends).

Prices seem to hover around the ¥10,000 yen mark here in Japan. Compared to some of the prices being quoted in The UK and US, quite reasonable I think.

Not sure if this'll be a relevant factor in the difference you've seen, but a repackaging of JW Blue was recently announced by Diageo, and the RRP for the new look bottle is £200.

whiskyintelligence.com/2011/09/…

I'm not sure what the old RRP was, but it seems a bit cheeky to stick the same liquid in a new bottle then hike the price up... but then they're probably not targeting us.