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Last Sunday, I sat down on the living-room sofa to watch the first episode of The Sopranos and poured myself a shot of one of the most glorious Scotch whiskies—Talisker, from the ruggedly sublime Isle of Skye. "Ewww, do you have to drink that right next to me?" said my wife, firmly planting herself at the far end of the couch. I eyeballed the glass—a bulb-shaped snifter ideal for focusing the whisky's aroma, or "nose." The liquid was a lustrous amber, but I had to concede that it smelled like a slab of smoked herring left overnight on the counter of a warm kitchen. And yet it's almost mild compared to a Laphroaig, from the Scottish island of Islay. The nose of Laphroaig has smoke and seaweed and something overpoweringly medicinal, like hospital bandages. It smells like someone being treated for burns beside a smoldering building. Next to a bog. Across from an open-air fish market. It smells like ... heaven.
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