Flora & Fauna vs Signatory Vintage | 43% ABV

Is it only whisky when it looks like whisky?

It’s a strange human trait, isn’t it, to expect certain things to follow certain colour rules. In fact a lot of things in the world can only be presented that way otherwise we, as the consumers, choosers or opinion makers, reject them. It just doesn’t look right. A car tyre must be black. A fire engine must be red. The lab coat of a doctor or scientist must be white. Grass must be green. Bananas must be yellow. And whisky must be a deep, golden tone of amber. Anything else, and we say no.

There are companies operating right now whose expertise is to take natural products and manipulate them so that we will look at them and think “yeah, that’s the right colour of that product” and subsequently buy. It’s often right there in the ingredients list - E100-199 are colourings for food and drink, with the “E” meaning European - it’s a food standards regulation thing. Consumers are so fussy about the colour, tone, shade, clarity, saturation and texture of food and drink that companies exist to alter the natural appearance, so that interested parties will buy them. One such company, DDW, specialises in pigments to change food and drink to look more appealing - and proudly state that colour is “... harvested by nature, perfected by science. Mother Nature supplies the raw materials, DDW adds more than 150 years of coloring expertise.” 

As a modernised diverse community of people, who expect things to aesthetically appear a certain way, we apparently need facilitators like DDW to step in and change the way our food and drink looks, just so that we will feel happy that the strawberry tart we’re about to stuff into our faceholes is the right shade of red. Or the orange juice in our glass is the right shade of orange - that the orange juice didn’t look correct enough when extracted from the orange is a bit of an indictment of just how far we’ve fallen into the consumerist trap of supply and demand, and value engineering of our food and drink. 

Changing the colour of processed food and drink so that we won’t have to worry about whether it looks right or not is probably a case of not seeing the wood for the trees, given that "processed" foods exist in the first place - things like farmed salmon are not immune to a little colour tinkering so that the flesh will look the right shade of pink. The same pink that "free range" salmon is; you know, naturally coloured. It’s an embedded psychological disposition of human beings to expect things to look how they taste. Chefs, like Heston Blumenthal, like to play on this human trait by creating foods that don't look like they taste. But living in the modern era means we can bloody well chop nature up, repurpose it and synthetically colour it to look like the natural product it once was if we bloody well want; force nature to fit our preordained aesthetic demands - we’re the alpha’s.

People new to whisky are, I’d hazard, attracted to this tasty beverage because of the way it looks - deep, rich golden amber - and the associated “lifestyle” that this product fits with; slow living, fireside ruminations, yomps up yonder in yon kilt. In popular culture whisky is often shown in this lust worthy fashion, from Captain Haddock’s Loch Lomond to James Bond’s Macallan, whisky is a familiar shade of honey-brown - you never see “M” sipping on a Classic Laddie, do you? It’s one of the biggest reasons that I, someone who rejected whisky for so long, kept trying to love it - whisky looks and smells wonderful and I always wanted the flavour expectation to live up to the aesthetic promise. Since finally falling head first into the chasm of whiskyland, I’ve been keen to draw others into this new world too and something that is heard more than I ever thought it would be is “that’s far too light to be whisky”. There’s variations on this theme - from “that’s a proper whisky colour” to “it doesn’t taste like it looks” - but more often than not, when I plop down a varied flight for new whisky drinkers to explore, a comment on the colour of each whisky is one of the first things to occur - whisky looks right when it’s dark, rich and saturated, and strange when it’s light, bright and transparent. It’s why glass manufacturers like Glencairn manufacture opaque blue, black, gold, red and white whisky glasses - we all, even if subconsciously, assign a flavour expectation to a whisky based on sight alone and we need these extra blinkers to stop us from wrongfully biasing a whisky because of its hue.

I vocally protest as being someone who isn’t manipulated by the colour of a whisky, able to keep myself “expectation neutral” until I have smelled and tasted a whisky, but that’s a lie and the Auchroisk before me is testament to that, but I’ll get to these whiskies shortly. It’s not long, in the journey into whiskyland, before you learn that a lot of whisky producers believe that whisky should follow a colour expectation, and that the people buying their whisky expect it too. Words like “consistency”, “uniformity” and “future-proofing” are used to explain away why colourings are added to their whiskies. Affectionately called e150a, it’s basically a sugar based caramel gloop that tints the alcohol to appear darker than it was when it came out the cask. In other words, a product that is manipulated to fit the expectations of consumers.

When I first set out on my journey I was naturally drawn to these darker whiskies; deep tinted drams like Edradour, Aberlour and Glengoyne. I would look through my Glencairn at Dailuaine and swoon at the glowing amber spectrum within - “what a beautiful colour!”. The more I’ve explored whiskyland, and the more whisky that I’ve been exposed to, the further I’ve inched from expecting a whisky to taste like it looks. Bruichladdich is a very bright, light whisky but has flavour in spades - bold, robust, mouth-filling flavours - maybe not christmas cake and dark fruit, like raisins, but it’s still packed full of interesting stuff. I’d be lying if I said that the colour didn’t make me lean towards notes of freshness and summer; I bloody well wrote just that in my review. Would I have said that if the Classic Laddie was the colour of GlenAllachie? Lagavuliin, Deanston, Caol Ila, Glen Elgin, Highland Park and Lindores all have whiskies that sit quite high on the hue scale but are not light on flavour - they exist in abundance. Coming into the winter season last year I was surfing the interweb and found, on Master of Malt, a newly released bottling from Signatory that was the clearest whisky I’ve ever seen and I just had to buy it. That I’d never tried Auchroisk, and that it cost just under £36 were reasons too, and when it arrived it was even lighter than the pictures on the website. I decided to save this until I had worked through the groaning stack of bottles that had amassed in my acquisition phase.

For 6 months it sat until I uncovered a bottle of Blair Athol that my father-in-law gave me, because he had two bottles, one of which was opened, and he works his way through whisky at a rate of 35ml per year. Now here, I said to myself, is a bottle of whisky that looks like a bottle of whisky should - like a western isles sunset in Autumn. If I had to pick a whisky from my stash of whisky as an example of how a whisky should look, I’d probably choose this as a prime example; it just looks right. I have many whiskies that are variations on this colour, but in the glass, in the bottle, on the shelf and in my hand the Blair Athol, with its creamy label, reddish serif writing and oak topped stopper, is the de facto whisky aesthetic. How fun to pair this up with the clear as water Auchroisk and see, when pitted against each other, what they both smell and taste like. What fun indeed.

Review

The two whiskies before me today are both very similar and very different. Both whiskies are produced by Diageo to go into Diageo blended whisky. Both distilleries feature just one official bottling, both under the “Flora & Fauna” badge. Both are 43% ABV. Both whiskies are offered through Independent Bottlers, but only one before me is today, and as a result only one of the whiskies here is manipulated to please the eyes.

Nestled on the south-side of Pitlochry, Blair Athol distillery produces its whisky, some 2,800,000 litres, mostly for Bells Blended whisky. This bottle - Blair Athol 12 year old from Diageo’s Flora & Fauna range, is the only official bottling to be released from the Blair Athol warehouses. Presented at 43%, the label doesn't mention anything about being naturally presented. Given that it takes very little effort or time to put these statements on the labels, most in the whisky exciters bracket will assume that this bottling is both coloured with e150a and chill-filtered, to remove any chance of misting up when ice is inserted or the bottle is chilled. You know, we could also assume that the lack of a statement means there isn't e150a or filtering, but we always seem to aim for the pessimistic side of things, don't we? There's a caveat here: at the suggestion of our sage elder Wally; it appears that some EU Flora & Fauna bottlings of whisky often don't feature the telltale "mit Farbstoff" statement (with colourant). Some retailers have declared the Blair Athol to be naturally presented, but for the sake of argument and because Diageo aren’t forthcoming with assistance, we’ll stick to our cynicism for now, which is echoed over at Whiskybase through their substantial community. 

For folk like me, in the upwards phase of their whisky discovery, this sort of spec sheet reads a bit disappointing; I have become a bit of an ultra of late, going for cask strength, naturally presented whisky. The Blair Athol 12 and others like it, with perfectly tinted amber glow and removal of those pesky cloud-making fatty acids, are beginning to fall a bit outside of my field of view. This is whisky, to all intents and purposes, made for those who just want a whisky that looks like whisky should. Folk that are not necessarily willing, able or interested in doing a Dougie and striding frantically through the whiskysphere with arms agape, grasping at anything and everything to find the next whisky that will silence an ever flowing mouth trumpet. A whisky for nondescript, easy pleasure; folk that drink with their eyes, the choosers of synthetic strawberry tarts over naturally presented strawberry tarts, right? It’s not for folk like us; Dramfacers; the elite; the upper echelons in the art of drinking pure uisge beatha.

Auchroisk, pronounced “auth-rusk” or “oh-thrusk” or “ar-thrusk” or whatever the hell you want to call it, is a distillery that produces around double that of Blair Athol - 5,900,000 litres capacity, of which half roughly heads for the J&B Blended Whisky brand, with a trickle heading into one easily available (if you’re in Europe ) official bottling: the 10 year old Flora & Fauna. There are some other pretty auld, rare and expensive releases like the 47yo released in the Prima & Ultima range, but that’s it. The independent bottler route, however, is where we find the spoils from places like Auchroisk and this bottling, from Signatory Vintage, is an 11 year old whisky distilled in 2007 using casks 803196 & 803197 respectively. Presented at 43% this whisky, unlike the Blair Athol, is both natural colour and non-chill filtered and, when poured into glass, is very clear; almost like tap water. Does the flavour follow suit - will this, as my eyes are telling me, be bright and zingy and fresh? Will it taste, as my brain is expecting, like a nice sharp Sauvignon Blanc? Will the lack of fatty acid removal and tinting pigments deliver a much more robust malty experience?

Blair Athol Flora & Fauna, 43% ABV
Widely available in the UK, coloured and chill-filtered (we believe)

Nose

Delicate malty bread. Nutty and sweet. Frangipani. Yoghurt. Buttery shortcrust pastry

Palate

Toffee apple. Boiled sweets. Honeycomb and coffee cake. Fresh washing. Solvent. Green apple, varnished wood. Caramel flapjack. Buttery Bakewell.

Score: 6/10

Signatory Vintage Auchroisk, 43% ABV
Sold out but regularly available form independents.

Nose

Dusty, mineral. Fruit cakes and sultanas. There’s caramel and an old cigar box. Tarte Tatin.

Palate

Coffee frappuccino. Ginger cake, baking spices. Highland Toffee and cinder toffee. Bit of red apple. Wee hint of a pencil. A very very slight sour pip at the death.

Score: 5/10

The Dregs

One of the big talking points, for those interested in the pursuit of whisky from a purists perspective, are the cards left on the table and the questions that follow - the “what if”, or “if only” - questions that remain from tasting a whisky that’s been fiddled with for cosmetic gain. Whisky exploration is made all the more satisfying when you know that the spirit is as unadulterated as it could ever be - little bits of floating cask and other inclusions are not just good signs, but actively sought out because it means that there is nowhere left to go - the pinnacle of that whisky experience has been reached, and there’s no excuses available if the flavour experience fails to live up to expectation. Oh, expectation! The fickle trap that keeps snaring me inside its sharpened, jagged grip. There are still lessons for auld Doog to learn - expectation versus reality is still one of them.

I expected Blair Athol to be rich and inviting, and that’s exactly what I got -  it followed the rich and inviting aesthetic because it’s designed to be that way. It is whisky delivered through the prism of expectation, and as a result it hits that lofty mark with incredible accuracy. It looks good. It smells good and yeah, it tastes good too. But that question rears its ugly head: what if? What if Blair Athol didn’t force this whisky through a paper filter at cold temperatures, removing those fatty acids and thus, allegedly, removing flavour? What if Blair Athol didn’t put colouring into the whisky to make it look that little bit darker? I didn’t find anything untoward that would reveal the caramel colourant influence on the whisky, but because I know it’s been tampered with, I’m expecting to find something; a synthetic edge somewhere. A very small sharpness appears at the finish and my mind instantly goes to that very question - is this the e150a talking, or is it just a natural sharpness present in the whisky character? 

I could sit and drink Blair Athol 12 all day, because it’s a smashing dram - it delivers in smell and taste, and for someone like me who is interested in specifically that exact experience, I cannot sit here and rightfully say it fails to do that. Could it be better? Well, if only we knew - I don’t have a Diageo supplied Blair Athol 12yo control sample that is untampered with, so I will never know. I can only go on what is available to me, you and everyone else, and that means just this bottle of Flora & Fauna. Does it look a bit too vivid orange? Is the e150a visible in this whisky? I don’t know that either, because again I don’t have samples of Blair Athol without these additives to check. So I must decide whether it’s a worthy whisky experience, even with all these boffin cards left on the table.

Expectation. I expected the Auchroisk to be sharp and citrusy, but instead I found sweet and malty, with pastry and marzipan - this time it didn’t follow the naturally presented, clear as water aesthetic expectations. This whisky leaves just one card on the table, and it’s the strength card. Despite being natural colour and non chill-filtered, this whisky is offered at 43%; I’m left wondering as a whisky-exciter, what extra goodies I could have found, explored and enjoyed, had it been offered at higher strength. There’s maybe a reason it wasn’t left undiluted - stretching those two casks further and yielding more bottles thus cash, is one big and understandable reason. Shifting these bottles quickly might have been another - the bottling date was 2019 but only appeared online in 2021 - where was it sitting for 2 years and why? But more interesting than that, for me, is that this bottle cost £36, for a whisky that is heavily diluted from cask and moreover, doesn’t look anything like whisky. It’s a strange concept; it doesn’t feel right. Folk like me might look at it and think it’s worth a punt just for fun or because you’re a fan of Auchroisk, but would the people looking at Blair Athol think the same? I can’t believe that they would - whisky must look like whisky, not wine. Whisky needs to allure, entice, attract, and £36 is the very price point at which a lot of people buy with their eyes. I’m not aware, skilled or experienced enough to work out the reasons, but from my layperson’s perspective the Auchroisk is very much an oddball.

I’m left feeling like this was an interesting test but the results are all a bit confusing, and not at all what I expected. I thought that the Blair Athol would disappoint, given my current penchant for face melting cask strength whiskies and my palate’s conditioning to almost be able to explore them at those heightened power levels, but it didn’t. I really liked sitting for a few nights in a row and simply enjoying Blair Athol as it is, without adding water to it and without having my palate awakened through the medium of belt sanding. It was, for want of a better phrase, a really good whisky. In contrast, I thought the Auchroisk would be an exciting experience, full of surprising twists and turns - oh how fun to have a whisky that is almost colourless but potentially has acres more flavour than this “fake” Blair Athol. The Auchroisk was a nice whisky but wasn’t as engaging as the Blair Athol, for me. It was nutty and malty and sweet, but it sat in its easy chair and waved from a distance. There was nothing to ignite the cheeks, or even move the eyebrows upwards. It just existed in the land of shrug; it didn’t charm me as much as the Blair Athol, and this poses some of the most interesting questions of them all.

Why do we care so much about how a whisky looks? Why does the forehead frown when a whisky tastes great, looks great and feels great (on the wallet), yet isn’t a purists presentation of whisky? Why must everything be presented in its purest form; does it really matter when you really, really think about it? We often talk of whisky being a "natural" product but does it grow out of the ground, or flow from a hill? Barley grows and water flows, but clever people then take these natural products and process them into whisky, so therefore whisky is a processed product. I saw the man in the bothy posted a photo of a Benromach 10 year old recently, and stated that it could be as well regarded as Springbank, if only they stopped chill-filtering it - i.e. present it naturally. I instinctively thought “YEAH BENROMACH, WHY!?” because I’ve grown into this world using folk like the man in the Irish Sea as spiritual whisky guides. 

Maybe the reason Benromach chill-filter the 10 year old (we assume, given they don’t state it either way), is that the folk who are buying Benromach 10 are the same folk who buy Blair Athol 12; they don’t give a stuff about anything other than wanting a whisky that looks and tastes great. Benromach offers whisky for strange, box ticking folk like us, unlike Blair Athol - and I know how good naturally presented Benromach is because it’s the only whisky I’ve marked an 8/10. But even despite that, should all whisky, regardless of age, colour, price or origin be completely unadulterated? I used to think so. but I don’t anymore. 

If my whisky collection, sitting behind me now like glowing amber memory totems of exciting experiences, were all cask strength, naturally presented whiskies, I’d be fed up. I’d be irked by the constant need to find a balance point with water dilution all by myself, especially on days when I can’t be arsed with tinkering and just want to sit and drink a whisky as it comes out the bottle, without struggling to breathe for a few minutes or reassembling my dismantled mouth. I need things like the Blair Athol in my stash so that I have options - I have reference points and a myriad of opportunities to love whisky in all its guises. I need things like Blair Athol in there to remind me that even whisky that’s a “lower” ABV, coloured and filtered can still make me gush with unabashed love for whisky.

Dougie does it again - shows his naivety through stating, at length, the bleedin’ obvious. Perhaps some of you reading this might be following the same mental path as me - going from gateway whiskies to expanding into higher ABV and cask types, to the ultimate expression of cask strength and naturally presented whisky and think that nothing else matters. I’ve fallen into yet another whisky learning rut - the groove which states that cask strength whisky is the best of it and anything short of this is not worth its salt. When I’ve been shopping for whisky of late, it either has to be cask strength or at the very least, fall inside the “integrity whisky” bracket, not as set out by me, but by people I look to for guidance and trust their opinions; minimum 46% ABV, unchillfiltered and without e150a added. As a result I’d been cancelling whiskies like Blair Athol - solid drams that just work when you fancy existing, of an evening, with a dram in one hand and the telly remote in the other. Gah, to know everything - it would be nice. 

Yes there are people doing whisky that isn’t tampered with at a price similar or lower than the Blair Athol, and I guess when it comes down to it, that’s the sticking point: if they can do it, why can’t others? If Springbank can offer us primo whisky, ticking all those integrity boxes at £45, why can’t Blair Athol? Why can’t Signatory with their Auchroisk bottling? Cash flow is king, and if more money is generated from making whisky look great using e150a and removing the chance of misty whisky for those who are upset by that, then this is what will be done. And that’s not something to get upset by. Not every whisky drinker thinks like us, and not everyone wants what we want - there’s no-one forcing us to buy Blair Athol 12 or Benromach 10, and I don’t think we should dismiss them or get upset by their tinkered status either. If it smells, looks and tastes great, then what does it really matter? 

I drank a cosmetically tinkered whisky and I liked it. The taste of her sherry chap stick. I drank a cosmetically tinkered whisky just to try it, I hope my Ardnamurchan don't mind it. It felt so wrong, It felt so right. Don't mean I'm in love tonight. I drank a cosmetically tinkered whisky and I liked it. I bloody well liked it.

Tried these? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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