What You Can Tell From the Color of Your Whiskey

When enjoying a pour of fine whiskey, taking in the complexity of aromas and flavors is the main event. But to appreciate a whiskey’s appearance, specifically its color, is often overlooked.

“Color is one of the first ways a whiskey introduces itself,” says Will Fabry, head distiller for CraftCo. “It sets the tone, introduces assumptions, and can even reflect the decisions we’ve made as craftspeople. From barrel selection to warehouse placement and blending ratios, to cellar conditions, every choice we make leaves its impression in the glass.”

What does the color of a whiskey tell you about how it tastes? Quite a bit. There are many factors at play, however. Knowing how different types of whiskey get their color can help give you a general idea of how a whiskey was made and, therefore, how it might taste.

Oak maturation and time

You can’t make whiskey without barrels.

When whiskey comes off the still, the distillate is crystal clear. Whiskey’s golden-brown color comes from its contact with the wood barrel’s interior during the aging process. Along with the color, all of the desirable flavor notes of caramel, vanilla, and baking spice also come from barrel aging. Barrel maturation is what separates a fine whiskey from harsh moonshine.

“The longer that the spirit is in the cask, the darker it tends to be because it’s having more interaction with the wood,” says Gillian MacDonald, master blender with Scotch whiskey producer Glenmorangie. “You can see a very clear graded difference between cask samples as time goes on.” 

Many American styles of whiskey are required by law to be aged in brand-new barrels made from American oak. These barrels are usually charred, meaning the interior of the barrel is burnt to varying degrees.

“The char helps process the [barrel] while acting as a natural filter, removing unwanted elements while pulling the flavors of caramel, vanilla, and spice sugar in the wood towards the inside of the barrel,” says Don McGinnis, president of McGinnis Wood Product and member of the Missouri Forest Products Association. 

New, freshly charred barrels, like the ones primarily used in American whiskey production, tend to impart the most color and flavor in a shorter period. 

“In places like Scotland, Ireland, and Japan, distillers typically use previously used ex-bourbon or ex-sherry barrels, which results in slower color development,” says Fabry. “This is why even 12- or 18-year-old scotch can appear lighter than a 4-year-old bourbon.”

“Freshly charred barrels have more to give, whereas used barrels have usually had bourbon in them for two years or more, so the easy access flavor and color have already been extracted by the bourbon spirit,” says MacDonald. “In the case of Glenmorangie or any distillery using any bourbon casks, we need to let our spirit mature in the wood for longer, to get the desired effect.”

Artificial coloring

Another factor to consider is the use of caramel coloring to adjust the overall color of a whiskey. 

In the U.S., using any sort of artificial coloring in bourbon or rye production is prohibited by law. What color you see in the bottle comes directly and solely from the barrel maturation process. As a general rule of thumb, the older the bourbon, the darker the hue.

“In Scotland, caramel coloring is permitted, which allows for color consistency regardless of barrel influence,” says Alex Moore, master blender at Heaven’s Door Whiskey. 

Scotch whisky producers are also not required to disclose the use of caramel coloring. That, along with the use of previously used barrels, makes it much more difficult to discern the relative age of a Scotch whisky from color alone.

Location and climate

Where a barrel of whiskey is aged also greatly affects how quickly it takes on color.

In Kentucky and similar regions, greater seasonal temperature swings enhance color extraction. Warmer temperatures in the summer encourage the liquid to penetrate the wood, while the much cooler winter temperatures reduce absorption. 

“In the industry, we often refer to ‘seasons’ of aging, which are temperature and pressure fluctuations that accelerate interaction between the whiskey and the barrel, sometimes occurring multiple times within a single calendar season,” says Moore.

In places with hotter and more humid temperatures and less temperature fluctuation, color extraction happens even more quickly. “​​If you’re in a very hot place, like Taiwan, for example, they like to use very used casks because the level of color extraction is so powerful,” says MacDonald.

In Scotland and Ireland, the temperatures are generally much lower in the summers than in Kentucky, with far less fluctuation in temperature between seasons. This climate, along with the use of used barrels, leads to a slower extraction of color over time when compared to warmer climates with intense temperature variation like that of Kentucky.

So, what can you tell from the color of your whiskey? On its face, not very much, but with an understanding of how different styles of whiskey interact with the barrels during the maturation process, it’s possible to make some basic assumptions on how that whiskey was made and what it might taste like.