Half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red label at the age of 14 put me off whisky for the next 15 years, and made a hell of a mess. A 10 year old Bruichladdich eventually cured me of the aversion.
Great thread and let’s face it, the best upgrade your system ever gets (however temporary) is the one that a glass or two of a good single malt gives you…
Single malts and some Bourbons are the only spirits I drink and there are very few I’ve tried that I cannot drink. Favourites for me amongst many others are Highland Park, Balvenie Double Wood, Talisker, Cardhu Gold and strangely enough Glen Moray which is my favourite cheap tipple and I’m rarely without a bottle of. Others in the cupboard at the moment are an Ardbeg Uigeadail (wow) and one of my favourite Bourbon’s, Bulleit.
Malts that really don’t suit my palate are any of the Glenfiddichs and Glenmorangies that I’ve tried, also any of the Welsh and Japanese efforts. Sweet, sickly commercial Bourbon’s don’t do anything for me either.
Can you tell more about that, Marco?
Glen Moray is easy to drink, and very cheap. It must have been a mismatch between expectation and the result. Maybe I try again in the future.
I recently emptied a bottle of this too fast, I got one as a present from a colleague.
Once I had a Girlfriend who was a smoker. When I kissed her after she had a smoke, I always felt is was a bit like licking an ashtray, even if I actually never licked one.
MArco 
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@Ardbeg10y Our palates are as varied and fickle as our ears…and long may they be so.
Over 20 years ago I was a manager at BT research Martlesham and I regularly used to host drinks tasting nights for colleagues (that’s posh for a good drinking session). These started out with everybody bringing a bottle of a particular type of wine but they very soon turned in to bringing a bottle of malt. We would set a price limit or perhaps only try malts from a particular region. Everybody had a tot from each bottle with water in between and what wasn’t drunk was taken home or swapped.
This way we got to try dozens of different malts and Glen Moray was my favourite in the sub £20 lot that we tried. However, there were some very good supermarket branded bottlings as well that are still mostly under £20.
I have to say the biggest disappointment we had was when we decided to all put £30 in the pot and buy one bottle. We settled on a £240 bottle of Highland and expectations were very high, naively so as it turned out as it wasn’t any better than a normal priced bottle. In this case the hand written label proclaiming the bottle number and particular barrel didn’t translate into quality.
The BT research bit is relevant (in a round about way) because one of the managers that used to come on these nights was also into hifi and he introduced me to a guy who had just started running a hifi business from his house over the road in Martlesham village…that was Alistair at Signals. The Densen CD and amp I bought from him lasted until I bought my first Naim gear almost 20 years later.
I think women smoking is very sexy. I once had a French girlfriend who smoked 60 a day. She was half-woman, half Gauloise and had that uniquely French gift of being able to do almost anything (and I mean almost anything) with a fag in her mouth, without ever breaking the ash.
Are you gonna tell me that Sophia, Christina, Marion and Jean aren’t smokin’ hot?
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I can only agree for Sophia, Christina and Jean. They look very sexy !
I could probably even forget about the ashtray. 
But for now, a tasty Ledaig from Signatory will do. 
Marco 
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In general, I believe Single Malts fall into 1 of 2 categories: “peaty” or “smoky”, somebody once told me the lowland malts tend towards peatiness, highlanders towards smoke.
Talisker is a nice Skye Malt, not too smoky and lacks the harsher iodine edge of Laphroaig which is caused by seaweed as I understand it. One I find hard not to neck is Aberlour, it’s got a very endearing sweetness to it and is extremely smooth. Dangerous!
Like Dalwhinnie. Quite soft and easy. Good whisky to give to non whisky drinkers.
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Arran 14 year old, bottled at 46%, an easy going, yet complex dram …jist ra thing fur Burns Nicht, ken. 
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Oooh, sounds very nice - where from does one get it?
Available on The River, and the usual high street specialist shops … highly recommended. 
The topic is “Bad Whiskies - …” !
Funny how we all tend to the other direction and tell stories about the lovely and nice tasting ones.
MArco
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I stumbled across this photo the other day - it usually does a good job of raising the hackles of our Scottish contingent
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Thai whisky is pretty bad, or at least the one I tried in a Thai restaurant in a fit of optimism following a superb meal involving bass steamed in banana leaf, the predominant nose (of the whisky) was of acetaldehyde, I didn’t finish the glass. I’ll allow that there might be something drinkable from that neck of the woods but I’m willing to let others try it first in future.
Are you saying it’s bad whisky? I don’t think you’ll find much argument in Scotland about that.