In the horse breeds that officially have this color, the horse has to have been born with blue eyes, that later turn brown. The horse also has to have pink, mottled skin. The champagne is a diluting gene that dilutes many colors.
In the Icelandic horses, on the other hand, you do not see horses with mottled skin, so the theory about the champagne color is propably wrong.
As the Icelandics that show this color do not have the mottled skin, and it mostly seems to affect horses with the creme (CCcr) gene, there are speculations that this is a totally different gene. An idea is to call that shade Golden.
The shade causes the a mane that would in normal cases be black to become much ligther. To know this apart from the silver gene, you can look at the color of the mane, a yellowish mane might be golden, a whitish mane might be silver.
Gnúpur, a stallion that
is golden buckskin.
C: Dawn Shaw.
A close up of his brown eye.
C: Dawn Shaw.
Eir from Tunuguhlíð,
a mare that is smoky black, but of an unusually
light color, so she might have something extra to give her the golden shade.
C: Lukka.
Eir again.
C: Lukka.
The brother of Eir has
a bay base color. He does not have any
silver
dapples anywhere in his father's pedigree (which is chestnut), and
his mother is buckskin and does not carry the silver gene. The light
hairs in his mane are also of a yellowish color, not whitish as in a silver
dapple. His eyes are brown. So he is propably a golden bay.
C: Lukka.
This is Thyrnirós from
Tunguhlíð, an old (and out of shape now) broodmare, the mother
of Eir and the golden bay. She is obviously buckskin, but she has
also got brown eyes (very obvious on this picture), and unusually light
brownish mane for a buckskin. She would then be a golden buckskin.
C: Lukka.
