It's a fun and clever little label for a trend that's quite obvious when it's pointed out!
Someone upthread mentioned stinky cheese, dry wine, and peaty Islay Scotch. Those things don't yet have absolute metrics - it'd be amusing to see what happens if they ever do.
"Listeria per cubic centimeter" might be a bit overly edgy.
Occasionally, I'm rather fond of Vacherin Mont d'Or, which in its original, raw milk based, recipe, is kind of the equivalent of Fugu for the landlocked.
Well apparently it's a bacterium called Brevibacterium linens that causes the stinky. So say the renowned biochemists at Readers' Digest magazine.
I've never tried your Swiss gloop but I am intrigued. One online seller claims that, "with one taste, [it] commands spontaneous exuberance." I wonder what form the exuberance takes? I will look out for it.
Wikipedia sorely needs a page listing quantitative metrics of comestible qualia.
Inspired by those two, I went on a hunt for a cheese metric but the search results got rapidly unpleasant ("Why does it smell like Swiss cheese behind my ears?" was what made me finally close the tab.)
ppm (phenol parts per million) is usually a reference to a "pre-distillation measurement" though, not the resultant distillate or the final aged product. Different run cut points (head/tails) heavily impact the amount of peat flavors that make it into the final distillate, as well as age (barrel time), cask activity, and.. probably barrel char too?
So while there is of course a rough correlation with ppm to final "peatiness", some scotches with slightly higher initial ppm may not end up tasting quite as "peaty" as some with slightly lower initial ppm may.
It does seem like PPM is being used "as marketing" in a few places these days though, which is probably to your point, and possibly a sign of things to come. :/
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A more common thing I see/hear is people bragging about scotch age and price. Older is not always better! Too old, and you can certainly lose some delightful peat characteristics present in younger ages, or get too much cask influence.
