Adding caramel coloring (E150a) to whisky is and has been a hot topic for a long time among whisky enthusiasts. The debate mainly surrounds the question: can you taste it? Opinions differ. I’m not convinced that you can, while others swear they are able to detect trace amounts of E150a. But that’s not what I want to write about. I want to talk about the reasoning used by Diageo’s Nick Morgan as to why the use of caramel coloring is actually a good idea. And why I think it is a deceptive practice.
This blog post is actually a reaction to an article that was published on Scotchwhisky.com, the excellent website spearheaded by author Dave Broom. However, you can’t leave a comment on that website. So I’ll just do it here on Words of Whisky. The article ‘Spirit caramel: friend or foe’ is basically a head-to-head discussion about caramel coloring between Adam Hannett, the head distiller of Bruichladdich, and Nick Morgan, head of whisky outreach at Diageo. Guess who’s in favor of it?
The Importance of Color
So why would a whisky company use E150a to color its product? Well, first it is important to know that the color of whisky is important. Something Nick Morgan agrees with, or as he puts it: “The appearance, the colour of your Scotch in your glass, is of huge importance.” I could not agree more. Color gives an indication as to what you can expect. Color might tell you something about the type of casks used and how active they were, and about the age of the whisky. Subsequently it might tell you something about what to expect in terms of smell or taste.
Sadly that’s not the only reason why Nick Morgan thinks the color of your whisky is important. He seems to ignore what color means in relation to the smell and taste of a whisky. Instead he’s mostly concerned with one thing: consistency. And for that he needs caramel coloring. Because your Lagavulin 16 should have the same color, batch after batch. Otherwise you and your tiny brain will get confused, or something.
Self-consciously Elitists
Morgan doesn’t seem to hold the consumer in high regard. This is what he says about the critics of caramel coloring. They are “a tiny and unrepresentative and self-consciously elitist group of vocal critics [who] are apt to signal their ‘expert’ credentials by claiming obsessively that spirit caramel affects the taste of the final whisky in the bottle”.
It’s not the first time he’s done this. He really seems to have a dislike for the people buying the whisky he is trying to sell. In an article about No Age Statement-whiskies he called its critics intemperate and ill-informed newbies. While I don’t doubt his whisky credentials, I feel it is safe to say he underestimates at least part of his consumer base.
True Consistency
Back to why Nick Morgan feels caramel coloring is a good thing. “You can’t taste it, you can see it”, he says. “And that’s one of the sensory triggers that gives the whisky drinker […] the assurance that the product they are drinking is going to be the same as it was before, and the same as it was before that.”
A contradictory statement. Misleading too. He’s in favor of using E150a because it assures the consumer of a consistent product. But if you artificially color a whisky, how does that assure me that a whisky tastes the same? Because that’s how I would judge the true consistency of a whisky, by taste and not by color. They could be filling the bottle with nothing but raw spirit and a fair amount of caramel, and it will look the same as aged whisky. But is that consistency? No, coloring is a form of disguising the true characteristics of a whisky.
What’s Important?
Finally I’d like to involve Adam Hannett from Bruichladdich. In the Scotchwhisky.com-article he states that whisky companies artificially darken their product to make it seem older. He adds: “If you combine this with that other simplistic industry mantra, that ‘older whisky is always better than younger whisky’, then there is a significant risk that people will misinterpret what they are being offered.”
Now we’ve already concluded that just because whisky looks the same, that’s no guarantee it actually tastes the same. What do you think a consumer finds more important: the look or the quality of the content? What Nick Morgan and his artificially colored whisky accomplish is actually quite deceptive, as Hannett already put so eloquently. Caramel coloring is as much, if not more about making a product seem more attractive by faking age or perceiving a certain richness of flavor, than it is about true consistency.
You have this exactly right. I care not a damn about color. I have recently had some very fine and pale 4 year old Kilchoman as well as a 13 year old Cooley both bottled with Single Cask Nation. In fact I liked the Kilchoman so much that I think I purchased the last two remaining bottles. These were completely different in color and both delicious in their own right for their own reasons. That the Kilchoman was so pale made it even more remarkably tasty. How would adding color have improved my experience?
I can see situations in which colouring could be useful. If you have 20 bottles of JW Red from different batches on the shelf of a supermarket, and half of them are pale, then I’m afraid most people would pick the darker half. It’s true that most of this public isn’t very educated and in this situation it’s too easy to see the differences.
BUT this doesn’t make sense for a single malt. Especially for Lagavulin which have dark glass bottles anyway – duh. Once it’s in the glass, I’m not sure people will recognize the ever so slight differences and have multiple bottles open at the same time to start with.
And simply mentioning a batch number would solve this easily. Could be something pretty random like for the Distiller’s Editions.
Really interesting article and well written, thank you
I think this is really a funny discussion. For whisky connoisseurs it is really not a question, things need to be as pure as can be and all information about the whisky should be made available.
But in the end you’re statement “What do you think a consumer finds more important: the look or the quality of the content?” you are probably right we want great tasting scotch! Making taste the most important part. But is that the only thing or is drinking whisky more about experience?
So whisky is mostly rated on how it tastes. But whatever you want the first thing you notice when drinking a whisky is the color. And even if you don’t really care about the color it is something you take in consideration and it might make you think what kind of casks could be used. Really blind tasting would be the solution to color. And even if you think that is how you should drink whisky most of the people tend to look at they’re whisky before they drink it. I even like all the different colors and what it can tell you. Making all changes to the color misleading for the customers who look at color for information about the whisky.
Having said that. For our friends at DIAGEO the biggest sales are from big brands that are sold all over the world. So it seems most people buy something they know will be “good” and has an constant “quality”. Where quality for most people eventually will be the taste.
I mean who looks at they’re drink and says, this is really a nice looking drink, and I don’t care it tastes crap.
So I think those big brands tend to focus on the same taste cause that is the most sought after constant quality. While we actually know all big brands tend to make whisky in batches carefully blended together to get the same taste over and over again. So the job of the master blenders is an nearly impossible job of making batches with the same taste. Now you could argue that creating the same taste eventually is really impossible, and I think that would be right, but they do a good job and most of the people can’t really taste the difference.
While the master blenders already have an nearly impossible job to create the same taste over and over again with different casks and quality’s it will be really impossible to also get the exact same color, which can be measured. Just for the fact that two casks of the same type and age will not taste the same and won’t have the same color.
For us that’s not really an issue we know color can be different and does not mean the whisky will be good or bad. But most costumers will definitely be surprised if the get two bottles of the same whisky while they are different in color. I have seen multiple people, even people that tend to know more about whisky than the average customer, on different Facebook pages and forums asking if something could be wrong with they’re whisky cause they had two bottles of the “same” whisky with a different color. So yes color is important for lots of people! So I would think whisky is not only about taste but it is the total experience.
In the end all brands have the choice to add color or not to get a same looking whisky. It is really up to the brand itself to say we want this whisky (brand type etc.) to taste the same and even look the same. Most of their customers will probably be less educated about their drink making them not only selecting the drink on taste but also on the looks making color and important selling argument. Why else there would be big campaigns with “great” looking ads, they work! Maybe they should make those more educational about color so people know that color could be different per batch. But as long as most customers are unaware coloring will be an important tool for the big brands to show they sell the same “great” “quality” every time and everywhere. Even if this is not what more informed whisky drinkers want, in the end we are a small portion of the customer base.
For me; I don’t really mind as long they are honest and it is stated on the label. Giving me the choice to buy a bottle with coloring or not. At least I am aware they made the choice to give all they’re batches an constant color.
Well written. Diageo is wrong about the NAS and Color issues. Lag 16 varies too much for me to trust it. I cannot see the color through the bottle, would not remember it exactly anyway. But the most important characteristic is ignored when they mask batch variations. I like what Aberlour does with its CS release. Batch numbers are different, nose-palate-and appearance. And that is ok.
NAS is a way to solve a volume issue they face with demand. I get the business motive. Laddie 10 vs Classic, obviously the Laddie 10 was not sustainable, unless they were willing to reduce distribution.
Single malts need to have an age statement, NCF, and natural color to be able to judge their reputation by color, taste, and bottling date. That is all I look for.
Well argued Thijs, and say that not just because I agree with the points you make. I also read that scotchwhiskyauction.com article: what struck home was how Nick Morgan talks about artificial colouring as being important toward maintaining the “integrity” of whisky. That struck a false note with me. Integrity at heart is about truth, use of colourant might reassure some, but only by disguise.
I would say critics of non-age statement whiskies tend to be the one with the more refined palates who have been in the game a long time as opposed to those gobbling-up everything regardless of age being the newbies. Nick Morgan is a blowhard, blaggard, dope.
A never ending discussion. It was discussed 20 years ago, and still does as today. Consistency and cosmetic, that’s what matters.
However some producers nowadays choose tend to use non or less color aditives.
It is true that these issues have become aspects of a never-ending debate, yet they really shouldn’t be “debatable” at all; if colour matters to whisky in terms of what it tells you (or could tell you) then it shouldn’t be manipulated, and if age matters to whisky (which is why whisky is aged in the first place) then there’s no question as to whether it’s valid production information and belongs on the label. The willingness to “debate” something doesn’t make it debatable in a real sense, or leave every such “question” in the eye of the beholder.
The silly tactic currently employed by the industry, and mostly bought into by consumers, is to confuse the question of “does this matter to me” with “does this matter to whisky”, as if the two are synonymous and somehow consumers “decide” whether age, for example, matters to whisky – and, if they decide it doesn’t, that makes age “irrelevant”; but, if that’s true, then you should be able to walk off the edge of the earth by “deciding” it’s flat, and fly by “deciding” that you “don’t care” about gravity.