Tasting parties are truly enriching experiences. At a social level, it represents a group of friends (or soon-to-be-friends) gathering around a kind of alcohol to talk about it and the other experiences that come to mind while tasting it. Educationally speaking, each palate can catch various flavors or descriptors and the rest of the group might try to pin down those tastes themselves. And, of course, there's the alcohol. Typically threaded together in some kind of theme that the host chooses; the theme of the tasting is a path, preferably one that leads to a deeper understanding of alcohol.
Last night's tasting was themed around Laphroaig. There were seven expressions, five from the distillery and two from Signatory. I won't go into the various tastes of any of them (I'm not much of a note-taker in that regard), but if you've had Laphroaig at all you'll know its house style is, well, iodine. It's more respectable to call it "phenol" but that's just a technical term. Essentially all five of the original bottlings held true to the house style, but the Signatories were less so. The seven year actually tasted more like a non-Lahproaig Islay malt. The 14-year Signatory tasted more like Laphroaig, but had more Speyside-y tones.
Interestingly enough the 10-year cask strength had a lower alcohol content than the 14-year that was also cask strength. This was likely due to a few factors like the 10-year was aged on Islay whereas the Signatory was likely aged in Edinburgh under stable conditions. The other consideration would be that the 10-year could have been a vatted from older barrels whose cask proof was lower. In other words - just because it's cask strength doesn't mean it's single barrel.
The consensus opinion came out that the 30-year was the best tasting, though the 14-year Signatory was the best high-end deal and the 10-year cask strength is the best cheap deal. The reasoning: water breaks down Laphroaig in bad ways.