I had a craving for some scotch and was deciding between random bottles, and I noticed Aardbeg(10 year) which I remembered being mentioned here so I gave it a shot.
I've got to say it is downright fantastic. It is very peaty like the other mid ranged scotch I've tried which I really like. But one thing that I liked that is also very interesting in this topic is that it comes with a booklet of very complicated descriptions of their scotches.
Before I read this booklet, it had mostly a nice rich, smokey peat flavor with some sweetness to it. A lot of subtleties but nothing I could particularly pick out as I'm no pro. But once I read the description it suddenly had an explosion of crackling peat, tangy lemon and lime juice, black pepper and sizzling cinnamon-spiced toffee. A wave of brine, infused with sweet buttermilk, ripe bananas and currants. Smoke wells up bringing warm creamy cappuccino and toasted marshmallows. Dry espresso, liquorice root and tarry smoke develop. The flavor was so complex and engrossing that I could barely pay attention to the episode of Star Trek: NG that I was watching since I was too busy picking out all the flavors.
So then I tried something else: reading the description of their next scotch and trying to pick out those flavors. It was a much simpler description actually, basically fruit cake, barbecued and honey roasted food(they really did just say "food" in the description), and olives.... and I actually could taste these things if I really tried.
It really makes me wonder if this stuff is just being made up for the most part. I mean obviously they aren't brewing scotch with marshmallows... I wonder if it just has a complex enough taste that you can imagine whatever the hell you want out of it if you try hard enough.
Nonetheless, I do enjoy it. I love drinking something and then reading a sophisticated description of it to totally change my perspective, placebo or not.