I'd forgotten about Laphroaig. IIRC, it's a little peatier than Talisker with Lagavulin being the most of the three. I've had the Caol Ila too but preferred the smokier ones to it.

 

Other quality scotches I've liked have been Bowmore (got a cool little flask included with the bottle too), Balvenie, and Dalwhinnie. There's no end to them either as there are different agings in a lot of them but they are expensive as you know. I was out to dinner during the "arctic vortex" cold a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd like to finish with a glass of scotch. Nice restaurant and all but $14 was a bit much (well, a lot much) so I passed.

 

I probably told this story in this thread before but we decided to have a "Scotch meeting" with the beer club (homebrewers) I belong to, maybe about 4 years ago now. Everybody brought whatever they had lying around their liquor cabinet and we got a map of Scotland from AAA, spread it out on a table and placed the bottles on the region they came from.

 

Very cool idea. Turns out we had one guy who was pretty knowledgeable on scotches and he led the discussion along with the tastings and we all learned a lot.

---