There’s something utterly disingenuous about the Laphroaig bottle, as if one were to approach a whitewashed Presbyterian kirk only to find a drug-fuelled rave going on inside. So it is with this innocuous hay-coloured drink. The nose does give fair warning, mind, with its bouquet of burning car tires. Unlike more retiring Islay malts, moreover, it doesn’t save its smoke for the afterburn-the peat smacks you in the gob from the first sip. It’s massive, chewy, savoury, like an alcoholic BLT. And all those off putting pharmacological comparisons-to Germolene antiseptic, iodine, etc-are true. It’s unique and powerful, but is it pleasant? Not exactly. My wife sits at the other end of the sofa when I drink it, and sometimes I feel like moving there too.