Most lectures about Scotch and its fine qualities will include a blurb about The Scotch Whisky Act. That law and its corresponding acts in the European Union and World Trade Organization set a relatively high bar for what can be called Scotch Whisky.
Intuitively, the first restriction is that it must be a whisky produced in Scotland. Correspondingly, The Scotch Whisky Act prohibits the making of any whiskies other than ones outlined in The Act. What does this mean? First, only malted barley, water, and yeast are allowed in the fermentation process. Second, it cannot exceed 94.8% abv during distillation. Then that spirit off the stills must be barrel aged for a minimum of three years. Said barrels cannot exceed 700 liters in size. Then bottling must be at least 40% abv and only caramel color can be added outside of the aged spirit.
Normally this little education in UK law is supposed to impress people. But there's a flip side to it - specifically that it makes bottling of dirt cheap Scotch rather hard. All drinks have some range of price and/or quality, and so there must be a cheap end to Scotch.
So once you have a spirit that can be called Scotch, then what? Bottling prices are largely fixed, so the cheaper the bottle the higher the percentage paid in just packaging. Then there's shipping costs which also do not discriminate based on price. Tack on an exchange rate that makes export to the US unfavorable and you end up with the bottom end for price for Scotch in Minneapolis weighing in at $10.99 per liter.
But this isn't all doom and gloom, for a quick shopping spree uncovered seven different brands of cheap Scotch available at that price in Minneapolis: Crawford, Claymore, Tyler & Lloyd, Old Smuggler, Scoresby, Bulloch Lade, and Cluny. So either these are all just names for the same stuff or there's actual competition at the bottom of the barrel.
As it turns out, each of the seven do have their own distinct tastes. The Claymore, for example, tasted a lot like a middle-of-the-road Canadian Whisky. All of them had a weak peat, salt, and malt taste to them. If any of them were mixed with soda or sour, you'd be hard pressed to taste the difference between these and a higher end Scotch like Whitehorse, J&B, or Cutty Sark.
And that's really the primary motivation for these Scotches. They really are intended to be mixed into cocktails or served over the rocks. These aren't brands people seek, but countless numbers drink them every night and don't know their names. To them, they're all "Scotch".
To be clear, I am not about to pour any of these down the drain. Once I assembled the bottles together I realized that by the end of tonight I could have seven liters of alcohol, each bottle with a quarter shot poured from each. I don't expect to drink these quickly, but I do plan to drink them. They're actually not that bad, and definitely some of the better cheap drinks out there. In a way it's almost a backhanded compliment to The Scotch Whisky Act for ensuring that even the cheapeast Scotch is at least minimally drinkable.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Old Smuggler left and I intend to drink it.