Does old Scottish Single Malt Scotch now have caramel flavouring for colour?

It is permitted to add caramel coloring, but not all of the distilleries engage in this stupid practice. If a given whisky looks rather pale you are looking at the natural hue without any shady (fraudulent?) practices going on to fool neophyte drinkers into thinking the whisky really is dark. Those unscrupulous distillers must think all of their potential future customers have thusfar never had anything but bourbon, and don't want these potential new customers to be put off by the naturally pale hue of whisky from Scotland, even though the hue has zero bearing on the flavor or potency of said whisky.

Whisky in Scotland is only legally requred to be aged in used oak barrels, not new oak barrels like bourbon. In addition Scotland is a cool climate, in contrast to Kentucky, where many (but not all) bourbons are produced. The combination of a hot, humid climate, with new, never used oak barrels means the bourbon will naturally extract a dark hue from the barrel, whereas in Scotland the cooler temperature will not extract that which is not even there to extract to begin with, since the barrels have already been used at least once (these are typically barrels that have been used to age bourbon, in fact, since they cannot be used more than once for aging bourbon, for example, since Beam Suntory owns both Laphroaig and Makers Mark, they ship the used Makers Mark barrels to Laphroaig once Makers Mark is done with them).

If Scottish authorities had any sense they would ban this shady practice of artificially darkening whisky with unnecessary additives (they would also ban chill filtering, grrrrrr, but that's a separate stupid issue). It's the same reason many single malts also come in dark green bottles, to hide their naturally pale hue, even though a peat monster like Laphroaig will make some grown men whimper if they actually bother to taste such a flavorful gem. Manliness is not measured in the darkness of one's whisky, but don't tell that to the unscrupulous distillers coloring their whisky to apparently impart this silly notion.

I wondered for a moment why you would dip a camel in Whisky. Then re read...😷

Many good Malt Scotch brand now use caramel flavouring