On the way home from trivia last night (where we did a crap job, it has to be said), I decided to stop at the liquor store because I’d run out of whiskey, and figured I’d peruse the Scotch isle. Haven’t tried anything new in a while in that department. But for the first time I spotted a bottle of Laphroaig, which had been recommended to me by a British friend a couple of years ago, so I went with that.

Laphroaig is distinctive as a whiskey from Islay, an island in the southeast of Scotland, and I’ve never tried anything from Islay before. I’ve never had anything at all like it. Some folks will tell you that the best whiskeys from Scotland will have dozens of detectable scents, but I get just one, almost exclusively. It smells very much like grandpa’s old smoker from when I was a kid. That beautiful, firey smell of smoking up a load of perch or whatnot… that. Or very nearly that. There’s something else in there I can’t quite identify.

The taste is similar, but instead of specifically that smoker, it’s like a supremely heavily smoked ham. Almost like drinking alcoholic liquid smoke. And man does it linger on the tongue.

Point is, though, it’s very very different. I like it a lot, but it’s definitely an occasional small drink kind of thing.