unless it is a Rusty Nail, I am not going to be making a cocktail with Scotch at all!
I like a rusty nail. For that, I'd go for the best blend I had, if I had one on hand, or else the most "generic" single malt if there's no blend around. Sort of the JW Red ... JW Black ... Chivas ... Glenlivet 12 sort of range.
I'd use the cheaper blends (up to and including JW Red) in a scotch-&-soda ... more of a drink I'd have at an "open bar" event and I don't like testing the quality of their house wine.
Here is one for you, if you were going to make a champagne cocktail, and you were using real champagne, which I have taken to doing, and you had a variety of cognacs available, how expensive on the cognac would you consider going, say for a drink with someone you knew would appreciate it?
So is this a cocktail with both champagne and cognac? I'm not too familiar with champagne cocktails (mostly just familiar with champagne and orange juice thing, where I suspect the key is to get fresh-squeezed OJ rather than the industrial stuff we usually drink.)
I'm also not as familiar with Cognac as I am with Scotch, so I don't have much of interest to say there.
but I could see going pretty expensive with the Cognac, assuming it was just sitting there in the bottle! For one thing you are not using that much.
Well, you have to open a whole bottle of champagne. So that may limit the quality range of the champagne (not that it'd be "bad" but there's the "entry level" stuff and then levels above that, and I'm not sure how many levels up you'd go for that.)
I guess I wouldn't want something "unbalanced" where some ingredients are high quality and others are not.
I do not think anyone I know these days is going to be impressed with Chivas
The scotch culture has moved on from blends pretty much. Now it's all about the single malts. Now, Chivas may well still be a very enjoyable blend but ... yeah, it's not a "statement scotch" to make a show of bringing out at a gathering.