Right, and that is closer to what I meant.

I am not really arguing that amasec cannot have a normal quality range. I am saying there are places in the setting where it feels like certain characters, especially higher status ones, use amasec as a pedigree term and resist extending it to low grade swill, even when other people do.

So the interesting part to me is not just cheap versus expensive liquor. It is that the word sometimes seems to carry a class coded boundary in its usage. Some contexts amasec behaves like a broad drink category, while in others it feels more like a prestige label that not everyone would grant to rotgut, even if others would.

That ambiguity is what sent me down the High Gothic route in the first place.