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Why is bourbon amber and vodka colourless ? Not by tradition : because a text requires it of one and forbids it to the other. The colour of a spirit is one of the few places where the law of spirits can be read with the naked eye.
The shades on this page are illustrations, not measurements. No standard fixes the colour of a spirit : they are chosen to make visible a gap between regimes of production. What is documented here is the craft and the text — the colour is only its visible sign.
Nothing after the still
A distillate leaves the still colourless. These categories stay that way because the law forbids them both colouring contact with wood and any added colouring: what you see in the glass is the spirit itself.
Attested in a text
Regulation (EU) 2019/787, Annex I
category 15, point d — « Vodka shall not be coloured » ; category 22, point a) iv — London gin « shall not be coloured » ; category 9, point d — « Fruit spirit shall not be coloured »
New charred oak, no adjustment
The strictest case: bourbon must be matured in NEW charred oak barrels, and it is the only American whiskey still denied colouring. Its colour is therefore, entirely and verifiably, the work of wood and time.
Attested in a text
« Charred new oak barrels at 125° or less » ; column of permitted colouring: « Yes, except for bourbon whisky »
Maturation in wood, caramel allowed to even it out
The colour comes from the cask — three years at least for a whisky, in containers of no more than seven hundred litres. The law admits a single additive there, caramel, and for a single purpose: to adapt the colour from one batch to the next. What the eye reads as age is therefore partly a blending decision.
Whisky Rum Cognac Armagnac Calvados
Attested in a text
Regulation (EU) 2019/787, Annex I
category 2, points a) iii and d — maturation of at least three years in casks ≤ 700 litres, « no addition other than plain caramel (E 150a) used to adapt the colour » ; category 1, point e (rum) ; category 4, point e (wine spirit) ; category 6, point e (grape marc)
A year in wood before any adjustment
The finest rule in the regulation, and the most revealing of its intent: a fruit spirit is not coloured, unless it has spent at least a year in contact with wood — and only then does caramel become admissible. The colouring does not create the appearance of maturation, it evens out the maturation that did take place.
Fruit spirits Grape marc spirits
Attested in a text
Regulation (EU) 2019/787, Annex I
category 9, points d and e — « Fruit spirit shall not be coloured » ; by way of derogation, « caramel may be added to fruit spirits which have been matured for at least one year in contact with wood »
A colouring maceration, after distilling
The green of absinthe comes neither from the cask nor from a colouring: it comes from a second maceration of plants — hyssop, lemon balm, petite absinthe — in the finished distillate, whose chlorophyll passes into the alcohol. It is an unstable colour, turning brown in the light, and that turn is a sign of authenticity rather than a fault.
Reported — no text defines it
Production practice, with no regulatory definition
Absinthe has no category of its own in Regulation (EU) 2019/787 — it appears there only as a possible flavouring of a liqueur. Its colouring therefore rests on practice, not on law: to be sourced on the technical literature before any raising of its degree.
The fruit itself, macerated
A crème de cassis owes its colour to macerated fruit, not to maturation or to a colouring. The regulation requires the fruit named to be the one that dominates the product — it says so of the aroma, and practice holds that the same goes for the colour.
Reported — no text defines it
Regulation (EU) 2019/787, Annex I, category 34, point e
« The fruit or other raw material used in the legal name is the fruit or raw material that gives the predominant aroma » — the text addresses aroma and not colour: extending it to the colour is a practice, and the degree says so.
The regulation admits caramel to adapt the colour from one batch to the next. What the eye reads as age may therefore be a blending decision — and that is precisely why colour cannot be read on its own.
A fruit spirit may have spent years in a neutral vessel without taking on a tint. The absence of colour speaks of the absence of wood, not the absence of time.
The Atlas documents, it does not recommend. These six regimes are not ranked : they describe ways of working, two of which are not even defined in law — and the page says so rather than rounding it off.
State of the corpus : 4 regimes attested in a regulatory text, 2 reported with no legal definition. Recorded on 2026-08-30.