I only tried out a few of the distillery bottlings of stuff like Ardbeg Ten-Year-Old - sustained smokiness and probably a bit too much of it - and quite young Bruichladdich The Organic, which was okay as the first whisky I tried ever about a month or two ago. There was no comparison and it's all pretty new to me.
The coloring agent permitted in single malt scotch is odd, the "blend" of several whiskies is odd to me as well.

The Highland Park above is very mildly smokey and, well, fruity for me. Maybe a bit too much wine cask, barrel or whatever it is, evoking memories of the red wine vomit session mentioned earlier in this thread at times. It doesn't contain any colouring agents, is un-chillfiltered and from a single cask, not a "blend." Quotation marks because blended scotch seems to be something else, if the Wikipedia entry about the topic is to be trusted.

Laphroaig was also available from the bottler and line above. It was good, maybe even better than the distillery bottling of something else from the same brand. Maybe not. They're all fine and different.

All the interesting adjectives people like to toss around when they talk and write about scotch and booze in general make me smile and recollect the time when I was shopping around for a home theater system in a hi-fi and hi-end stereo store. All gets ethereal at some point and placebos are to be found left and right. There's a solid chance that if a bit more is spent on the gear, it'll sound better. The alchemistic tendencies of some people in the business is something else though.