I can't talk to as far back as GP, but as someone who's been teetering on the edge of whisky snobbery for the past decade or so: a major change has been a shift to no age statement (NAS). This has been accompanied by an obliteration (either complete unavailability, or equivalent due to costs exceeding sane economic bounds) of older options. The logistics for a product that has a 20+ year lead time are extremely fragile against varying market demands.

This isn't inherently bad. There are some mind blowingly good options (Octomore et al) that fall under the NAS umbrella, just a different set of products to what may have traditionally been seen as a defining production technique.

Ah I see. You are definitely way deeper down that rabbit hole than I. I got Ardbeg Uigeadail (which I think didn't state its age, like you are mentioning) and thought it was fantastic. Even Laphroaig and Macallan and so on suit me fine.

Thanks for asking. For me a lot of single-malt scotch, up until around 2000 (maybe later) seemed never to have been completely domesticated as a normal consumer product. Depending on what kind you liked, it could be almost kind of gross. My favorite in the 1990s was Talisker, which had almost a kind of rotting fish flavor. I have literally tried mixing a dash of fish sauce into today's Talisker to recover that. (Unfortunately that doesn't seem to work.)

Talisker now is a bit fiery, maybe very slightly reminiscent of the sea, and otherwise unobjectionable. It doesn't have what I need. I wish them well, but either my taste has changed or theirs has.

This is interesting, and I love your taste for weird off flavours. I lately have developed a new love for whisky that appeared almost out of nowhere. Something about the alcohol taste disappeared suddenly and opened a whole world.

Can I ask kind of Scotch you like now? There's probably something out there that I'm just not finding.

EDIT: I'm open to things that I hate on the first sip. In fact that might work best for me.

I'm probably the wrong person to ask, because my tastes are very indiscriminate (I like pretty much all of them) and I'm not that experienced tasting whisky. I had the cask strength Laphroaig (10 yrs) and loved that with just a touch of water. Really wild deep flavours.

Thanks! Have you compared it to the "regular" 10y Laphroaig?

Not side to side! I vaguely preferred it, but I can't say without a blind trial or something.