What I learnt at Whiskey live.

What I learnt at Whisky Live.
There are four or six whisky distilling areas in Scotland (depending on who you ask).
After it has been Distilled, all whisky has to be matured for at least three years in Oak Barrels, some will be matured for much longer.
If a blended whisky has an age statement on it, that is the age of the youngest whisky in that blend.
A Blend Whisky will usually have a mixture of Grain (Distilled in a continuous "patent" or "Coffey" still) and Malt Whisky (distilled in an onion-shaped "pot" still).
A Pure Malt Whisky will only use Malted Whiskey.
Blend and pure Malt whisky will mix whiskies from several different Distilleries until the blender achieves the taste and smell they want.
A Single Malt Whisky will mix a number of different whiskies, that have been produced from the one distillery, until the blender achieves the taste and smell they want.
Most of these whiskies will add colouring (usually Caramel) so every bottle produced is identical. If the bottle says nothing about colouring not being added, then it has been artificially coloured.
As the whisky is matured in oak casks, the whisky will sometimes have fats and or oils from the wood in it. When ice is added to the whisky, these fats can go cloudy, so they are removed from mass produced whiskies (usually by a cold filtering process). The problem is fats contain flavour.
A single cask whiskey that has not been cold filtered or had colouring added, is the best to aim for. The problem is quality costs and you will be lucky if you can find a bottle of this whisky for under $100 a bottle.
But they taste divine.