Ink Review #46

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

Overview

The color/properties:

Ferris-Wheel Press Sparkling Champagne is a shimmering ink. The base color is a light golden-yellow with fine golden shimmering particulates. There’s some light but crisp shading, as well as the possibility for some deeper orange tones around the edges of letters where the ink pools heavily enough. Sparkling Champagne is a light color, and while I don’t think it’s too light to be easily readable, it might be difficult to see on graph paper, or if a darker ink is used on a subsequent page.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

During my tests, I experienced some light feathering and bleed-through on the Kokuyo paper, but otherwise, there wasn’t any noticeable feathering or bleeding on the other test pages. Sparkling Champagne’s dry times were higher than expected, but still average, and managed to dry within the 20-second mark across each nib unit. The water resistance was poor, as expected: after being exposed to water, there were some light shadows left behind of what was written, but they weren’t dark enough to be legible.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

Sparkling Champagne has a dry flow that was consistent across each of the test nibs. For the most part, I didn’t run into any performance issues, but I did encounter consistent skipping and stops with the extra fine nib on the Kokuyo paper. Otherwise, I didn’t run into any more hard starts or stops, but I did feel that the lubrication was lacking with this ink. I think this is an ink that would benefit from a much wetter nib.

The cleaning experience with Sparkling Champagne wasn’t great. The color and particulates washed out of the nib units easily, but unfortunately, there was a reflective haze left along the barrel, as well as a thick coating of particulates around the crown of the piston left behind in the pen. The left-behind particulate was easily scrubbed off, but the pen had to be disassembled in the process.

• Performance in a pen: 7.5/10

• Performance on paper: 9/10

• Color saturation: 5/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 5.5/10

• Dry time: 7.5/10

• Water resistance: 1/10

• Ease of cleaning: 6/10

• Shimmer: Gold, Light

My personal thoughts…

When I first purchased this ink, I had a feeling that this was going to be similar to Golden Beryl, Pelikan’s 2021 Ink of the Year. It didn’t take a lot of time with this ink to realize that I was pretty far off. Sparkling Champagne is very much its own thing. The color is a touch lighter, but more notably, the shimmer is much finer and lighter than that of Golden Beryl. As I said earlier, the color is on the dry side, and I think a wetter-tuned pen would not only make this a much nicer writing experience but also help to bring out some of the more nuanced characteristics of this ink.

With all that said, I think Sparkling Champagne is a perfect name for this ink. The light golden color and fine shimmer do an excellent job of recreating the soft effervescence of a glass of champagne — perfect for signing a New Year greeting card, writing your final journal entry of the year, or jotting down a list of resolutions. That’s why I chose this for my final ink review of 2023!

And on that bombshell, it’s time to end! Wishing all of you a safe and happy New Year! See you in 2024! 🥂

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 with 5 nib units including an EF, F, M, B, and 1.1mm stub, All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.

• A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

• A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

• A Midori MD A5 Notebook

• A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

• A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

• A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook