If you’re into whisky enough to regularly check up on whisky websites or YouTube channels–especially those related to Scottish enthusiast Roy, better known as Aquavitae–there’s a good chance you’ve heard talk of “natural presentation” or “integrity presentation”. Even if you haven’t heard those particular turns of phrase, you’ve probably heard single malt enthusiasts prattling on about how such and such a malt is unchillfiltered, or is natural color, or some such.

But isn’t single malt whisky already a “natural” product? It’s just the malted barley, some water, some yeast, and the magic of fermentation, distillation, and maturation, right?

Well, like a lot of things, it isn’t quite so cut and dried as all that. Yes, single malt Scotch whisky is produced exclusively from malted barley and water, fermented by yeast, distilled to a higher alcoholic strength in copper pot stills, and then matured for a minimum of 3 years in oak casks. 

However, quite a few things can, and often do, happen to whisky in between the cask and the bottle.

First of all, whisky almost always goes through some manner of filtering to, at a minimum, remove cask sediment.  Unless it is being bottled at cask strength, it will also be diluted with water, and unless it is a single cask bottling, it will be mixed together with whisky from multiple casks, sometimes of different types and of different vintages. Finally, producers are permitted to add neutral spirit caramel to their finished product to create a darker–or sometimes, just a more consistent–color. 

Let’s talk a little more about filtration. The least invasive filtration method is plain barrier filtration, which passes the whisky through a filter–more or less fine–to remove large sediment such as cask fragments. Unless you’re fortunate enough to be in a maturation warehouse sampling directly from a cask, you can be pretty confident that your whisky has been through barrier filtration. 

A by-product of the distillation process are certain chemical compounds that, when chilled, begin to solidify. Such compounds will naturally cause a whisky to appear cloudy when stored at cold temperatures, or when ice is added. Because such cloudiness is deemed undesirable, and because many casual consumers deliberately chill whisky, or add ice to it, many producers use a process known as chillfiltering to remove the fatty acids that cause that cloudiness. Essentially, instead of just passing the whisky through a barrier filtration device to remove cask sediment, the whisky is first chilled to the point where the offending compounds solidify and then passed through a fine barrier filter, removing both sediments and also the solidified compounds.

Diluting whisky down to 40-43% abv, chillfiltering, and adding coloring are common, widespread practices in the Scotch whisky industry. Much of the industry is driven by volume, and you can get a lot more mileage out of your whisky when you dilute it down to 43% or better still, 40%. A lot of consumers do like to add ice to their whisky, or even chill it, and many perceive darker color as a marker of quality, so it makes sense to present bottlings that have an attractive color that won’t mysteriously become cloudy under certain conditions in order to appeal to the broadest possible array of consumers. And, according to producers, the impact of chillfiltering or adding spirit caramel has a negligible impact on the character of whisky. 

Purists tend to be skeptical of such claims. Intuitively, it seems like adding something like neutral spirit caramel to whisky might change the taste. It also seems like removing a compound could change the taste. And since it is common knowledge that diluting whisky from the bottle will change the flavor profile, it’s pretty obvious that diluting it pre-bottling will affect things as well. Certainly, the more a whisky is diluted, the more it tends to lose body and texture. For those reasons, most whisky enthusiasts tend to prefer a product with minimal adulteration.

Increasingly, whiskies marketed at enthusiasts are unchillfiltered, natural color, (absent specification, you can assume a whisky has been chillfiltered and has had color added) and bottled at or above 46% abv, allowing some room for the drinker to dilute on their own without dropping below the 40% legal threshold. “Integrity presentation ” or “natural presentation” has come to be a shorthand for describing such whiskies.

So how much difference does integrity presentation make? Big industry players like Diageo and Pernod-Ricard who send a lot of single malt whisky out into the world at 40% or 43% abv, chillfiltered and with spirit caramel added would probably tell you that integrity presentation does very little to enhance flavor. At the other extreme, some whisky bloggers and YouTubers will probably tell you that you might as well drink vodka if your whisky doesn’t check all the boxes for integrity presentation. As is often the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. 

There are certainly some good–even great!–whiskies out there that weigh in under 46% abv, and there are even more that you can assume have either been chillfiltered or had color added, or both. On the other hand, it stands to reason that the more you fool around with the product, adding some stuff and subtracting other stuff, the more you’re going to change the character. In short, it’s hard to see the downsides of integrity presentation, at least for the consumer, while it’s easy to see how things could go wrong with chillfiltering, the addition of spirit caramel, and over-dilution.

For my part, I increasingly value integrity presentation whiskies. Much of the appeal of single malt Scotch is its integrity as a product, its character and variety of flavor, and even the way it feels in your mouth. Integrity presentation has, at worst, a net-neutral impact on these things and very likely enhances at least some of them.

For that reason, I would advise my readers to support producers and bottlers who present their product naturally. Moreover, I would advise being pickier about what you buy that doesn’t guarantee integrity presentation. While I wouldn’t advise a wholesale boycott of producers who chillfilter, add color, or regularly bottle at lower strength, I would advise being more careful about which of their products you buy, and how much you spend on them.

As any whisky enthusiast who’s been drinking for a while is aware, prices for whiskies–especially Scotch–have skyrocketed. Lots and lots of mass-market whiskies increasingly command premium prices, despite minimal effort to ensure the integrity of the product. Although there are exceptions, I would strongly advise against spending more than $50 or maybe $60 on any bottle of single malt Scotch unless it is presented naturally,–or at least bottled at 46% abv–especially if the product in question has a relatively low age statement. Anything bottled at the minimum strength of 40% abv probably shouldn’t ask for more than $30 unless it is quite old or rare. 

If you reserve your hard-earned money for integrity presentation whisky, you’ll probably enjoy your purchases more, and if enough people follow the same policy, we may force more producers to bring more naturally presented whisky to market. After all, if a small firm like Burn Stewart (proprietors of Bunnahabhain, Deanston, and Tobermory) can make money bringing only naturally presented whisky to market, then so can bigger players like William Grant (Glenfiddich, Balvenie), Edrington (Macallan, Highland Park), Diageo (Lagavulin, Talisker, Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore, and many more) and Pernod-Ricard (Glenlivet, and many lesser known distilleries). 

Some whisky is intended for a mass-market and for more casual drinkers (entry level Glenlivet, Glenfiddich and Glenmorangie). Some whisky (*cough* Macallan *cough*) is mainly bling for people who care more about image and perception than about what they’re actually drinking. But a lot of whisky out there is mainly marketed to people who like whisky, and there is no reason to let producers get away with charging $90 for a 10 year old Scotch that doesn’t check any of the boxes for integrity presentation.