Whisky Colouring

I also apologise for the atrocious prose above, I am very tired

My process for working it out: 1) Is it Bruichladdich? No caramel guaranteed 2) straw and gold coloured, or pale whisky (clearly been aged in refill bourbon only or non-reactive oak casks)? - no caramel because there is no telltale "brownish" tinge 3) Heavily sherried malts probably don't contain caramel (e.g. Aberlour and Glenfarclas don't - not sure about others). It's all about standardising the shelf presence when the whisky is in the "middle of the road" colour range. Sherry "red" doesn't fall into this category, so, AFAIK, no reason to add caramel unless they need to disguise something else about the whisky by artificial sweetening 4) Is it brownish? Is it mass produced? No statement on the label about caramel? Or is it a blend? It probably contains caramel.

I don't really think you can generalise by region whether a whisky is coloured artificially. Like systemdown said, the colour depends a great lot of the cask it matured in.

Virging casks and bourbon casks make a lighter coloured whisky than sherry casks. And refill sherry casks make a lighter coloured whisky than first fil sherry casks.

I do have noticed that single malts that don't contain artificial colouring often mention this explicitly on their bottle or packaging, same as with no chill-filtering. Examples are Glendronach (12 yo & 15 yo) and Macallan (cask strenghth). The same with Connemara (cask strenghth).

I don't think there's a general rule however, because the Dalmore 15 yo, which is also matured completely in sherry casks (like the aformentioned Glendronach & Macallan), does have artificial colouring.

As to blends, most of them, at least the major brands (Johnnie walker, Ballantines) are caramel coloured. Why? Because tot the majority of the people (which only drinks blends), colour equals age & quality. Also, they want their product to have a consistent colour because many people would find it odd that eacht tim they buy their Johnnie Walker Black (for instance), it has a slightly different colour. Of course there are exceptions to this, because Compass Box, for example, never uses artificial colouring. But again, they mention this explicitly on their bottles.

In Germany (and also in Scandinavia i think), companies are required by law to mention if a whisky has artificial colouring. I do believe this should be a general rule for all countries. Even better would be to ban artificial colouring, but that's just wishful thinking.

After some research into the topic I came across multiple postings of a list apparently from "Systembolaget", a swedish body that regulates alcohol in that country. Apparently laws mean that additives need to be declared over there, so someone made a list of scotches that have caramel added.

Now, here's the interesting thing. This list has been posted in many places. You may be surprised to find whiskies such as Aberlour A'bunadh or Glenfarclas on there. Glenfarclas even state right out that they don't use it, so why is it on the list?

Well, here's the issue: some people took to copying the original list, but omitted the formatting entirely. The original website was a table with whiskies listed, and in one column it would list whether caramel was added or not. Some people just copied the list, so it seems like they're saying ALL those scotches have caramel added, when the truth is that the list said no such thing.

For anyone who wants to see the original thing (back from 2004, doesn't exist now), go to:

web.archive.org/web/20041215065739/…

Thank you, this is all very useful stuff, exactly what I wanted

@splice42 This is great. I guess I just passed the researching down to you, but now this list can be seen by al of us. Thanks a ton :)

Systembolaget is the Swedish alcohol monopoly, you can see lots of Swedes with clanging bottles coming out of there on Friday night.

If you look on many online German drinks retailers, you may see a designation that a particular whisky contains coloring, in German this is "Mit Farbstoff" or "Enthält Farbstoff" as in this link here for example:

mcwhisky.com/whisky/schottischer-whisky/…

Here's a thread about colouring and chill-filtration: whiskywhiskywhisky.com/forum/viewtopic.php/… They've tried to sum up all distillers / bottlers that only bottle the natural way. It's safe to assume all other will colour / chill-filter unless they state otherwise.