I'm on the morning after tequila sipping Edit with further evidence found on Mrs STANDY,s phone for @AAAKK ( which quickly turned into below )
funny you mentioned that as I was thinking the same while taking the pic... and wonder if any or how much of other ingredients are added for coloring purposes... @Foo2rama any idea?
TLDR: If it doesn't say no colorant added you can assume a minimal amount was added for consistency across the expression. Well that is an interesting question and one that needs a little delving into and description of everything going on with a bottle, the legal definitions of Scotch and a bunch of other things.... First things first any Scotch at 40-45% has been watered down as 40% is the minimum legal limit. 2nd Single Malt just means it is from the same distillery, and can contain juice from any barrel they have that was distilled at that location. The age statement just means the youngest in the bottle. So a Glenfiddich 12 can have 21, 15, or 40 etc in it. This is done on most if not all age statement Scotch that is a staple of a line. They do this for consistency and have highly trained blenders that can make batch after batch taste like the ones made 5 years ago or 10 years ago. What is in said 12yo will most likely contain mostly 12 year old, but batch to batch the amount of other stuff will vary. Keep in mind 2 barrels of the same age from the same location next to each other on the rick, from the same distillation may taste quite different from each other. Some blenders can tell where in the rick ( barrel storage) a barrel was by taste as different areas can have different temperatures and humidity. Also for consistency 2 things may be done, adding of colorants and chill filtering. The only true way to know if colorants have been added is to track down a German Market bottle as that is the only country that mandates the inclusion of this on the label. Chill filtering is another thing done in the name of consistency. If you chill most bottles of scotch it can get hazy or cloudy, this is the same as the more dramatic louching or adding cold water to absinthe which turns a normally green clear liquid to a pearl white/green couded mixture. This is the oils in mixture starting to precipitate out of mixture. So almost all big market scotch has been chill filtered, that being said most people feel this removes some flavor in the effort to make a bottle look better on the shelf. Now some people are no longer chill filtering which they feel helps improve taste. But the best way to tell is look at the bottle, as Bruichladdich now does not have any added colorants or chill filtered states so on the bottle. Most non chill filtered will be labeled on the bottle. So this brings us back to that bottle of Auchantoshan.... I would assume it might have minimal colorant added as it was staple in the line for a few years, but it is not that different from uncolored. I'm looking at a Auch 12 year old which was aged in Oloroso, and bourbon barrels (most scotch is in bourbon barrels as they are super cheap,) and has a nice red color from the Oloroso sherry casks. NOTES: Single Cask - Means its all from the same cask, can be watered down Cask Strength - generally means not watered down, but some are... (looks at Laphroig) mostly above 50% I have had them up to 68% not from the same cask always but normally is, you can normally tell from the label. Age Statement Scotch... ie Bruichladdich 2009 all the juice is from the same year but not from the same barrels or distillation batches. Expression - A distillery has different expressions, so Auchentoshan 12 is an expression, Triple Wood, and Classic are others etc. Thanks for reading! Now are you asking why Bourbon barrels in scotch? Want some more fun facts? Well barrels are expensive, and are normally reused for decades, but Bourbon by definition has to be aged in NEW barrels which means they make alot of bourbon barrels in the US and someone needs to use them. As Scotch demand has risen over the past decade and your looking at something that takes at least 3 years to make... well using new barrels ages things faster so you can make more full flavored scotch faster and market it in a way that does not have an age statement... Look at Auchentosian 3 wood... notice no age statement? Yup new barrels, aged for less time to build up stock faster to meet demand... in another decade 18 and 21's are going to be super hard to find as they have been sacrificed to meet the current demand for Scotch.
If I tell you guys & gals what I'm drinking, you'd better not buy any if/when it shows up on wine searcher. 1993 Shafer Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. This, and the 1995 vintage, are textbook examples of how wonderful the fruit grown at elevated vineyards can be, particularly in the Stag's Leap area. I own 3 more bottles of the '95, and it's the FIRST item in my bi-weekly search for wine out of about a dozen+ different producers. It's the ONLY* domestic / California wine, let alone Cabernet, that I'm compelled to Hoover up every last bottle I find. *I would put Arrowood from '95 and '01 on par, but since I have a connection at the winery I don't have to scour the internet for their product.
