Q: Whiskey color?
What words do I use to describe a whiskey’s color?
A: I will usually keep it simple and stick to words like straw, golden and caramel, tossing in light or rich if needed.
But if you’d like a plethora of descriptors, here’s a fun color chart from Whisky Magazine.
What’s more important than accurately identifying the proper shade of brown to describe a whiskey’s color, is understanding what the color means about the whiskey’s maturation. When whiskey comes out of the still, it’s as clear as water. All the color comes from the extraction of polyphenols from the barrel as the whiskey ages (unless there’s E150 added or it’s flavored/blended whiskey, but that’s for another post). New barrels will give a whiskey more color because there are more extractable polyphenols, while used barrels have fewer, resulting in a lighter-color spirit. Think about the color of a 4 year old bourbon in comparison to a 12 year old Scotch. Even though the bourbon has been aged for 1/3 of the time, it is much darker because it’s been aged in new barrels, while the Scotch typically is aged in those ex-bourbon barrels. If a whiskey is finished in a sherry butt or port pipe (fancy words for fortified wine barrels), it’ll take on some of the color from the wine still absorbed in the barrel wood. A whiskey will tend to look more orange from sherry and red/pink from port.
I think having this knowledge is more important than being able to see the difference between amber and gold.
Other Q&A Posts
“What are the different distillation cuts?” When distilling any spirit, there are parts of the distillate that you want to keep and others that you want to toss out. The distillation cuts are commonly referred to as the heads, hearts and tails and they condense off the still in that order. The hearts cut is what the distiller keeps, ages and bottles. Read about the composition of each distillation cut and more here!