Whyte & Mackay

I'd prefer it if they weren't. I don't care what whisky looks like, its the taste that matters and I never add anything to my whisky so chillfiltering would be a waste on me.

On the otherhand, Does caramel make that much difference to the flavour? I wonder how many could actually detect it...

All good points from you there. I'd prefer if they werent coloured and filtered too but you have to wonder how much it affects flavour.

The process of chill filtering is usually eliminated for "serious" bottlings. Grocery store shelf bottles of SM (Glenlivet 12, a nice light dram by the way) and virtually all blends are chill filtered because some organic compounds will precipitate out of solution when chilled (there's that ice problem again), and bar drinkers like to see clear ice cubes and clear whisky just like the pictures in the magazines.

On the other hand, no cask strength bottling (that I have ever heard of) is chill filtered because it would remove (by precipitation and filtration) some organic compounds that would influence the nose and flavor of the whisky, presumably in a negative manner by their absence. (It would also be false advertising to claim "cask strength" if anything had been removed.)

In general (judging only from my own meager 30 bottle collection), most SMs bottled at standard abv of 40% and 43% will be chill filtered. But we are starting to see OB bottlings proudly showing on the label that they are not chill filtered or colored (Ardbeg 10, Springbank 10, Bruichladdich 15 in my cabinet).

That said, those bottlings that are not chill-filtered are also not usually colored. The coloring is a commercial natural food coloring (E-150) that is almost tasteless even in high concentrations where it is slightly bitter. There have been some interesting tastings (blind) made with and without caramel added with inconclusive results. The extremely dilute concentrations of the caramel coloring are unlikely to be detectible by nose or pallet, but some claim otherwise. It is mostly used when a cask strength whisky has been diluted to 40% or 43% to bring the whisky back to "full color", again for the mass market.

Pour a dram of Ardbeg 10 and it is nearly colorless, with a light yellow tinge, yet it is a powerful Islay malt that belies its apparent weak color.

For those of you who have not seen the exhaustive blind tasting by the infamous "malt maniacs", here's a link with probably more information than you want to know. You can skip to the conclusions at the bottom of the page if you like:

Just a footnote: two of the tastes pictured on that page -- Bushido and blackeno -- were regular posters on this group a few years ago.