Lennon Tool Bar Winter Tonics #4 Mulled Wine - 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A deep wine red-magenta that darkens to near-black where it pools. Lennon Tool Bar and stockists describe it as a dark, warm spiced red. My swatches read cooler and more magenta than that suggests — the mid-tones sit closer to berry/fuchsia than to a warm brick red, and the deepest areas go charcoal-black rather than staying red.

Shading: Strong. The writing sample moves from light magenta on thin strokes to near-black at stroke ends, and the drops separate visibly into magenta and dark grey-black zones — chromatic separation as much as shading.

Sheen: None.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Medium.

The interesting bit: Lennon Tool Bar was founded in 2014 in Tamsui, Taiwan, and began life in indigo dyeing — a trade that thrived a century ago when Taiwan exported large quantities of "doroai," the raw colorant material, to Japan. The inks came later, as a way of putting traditional dye colours into people's pens. Mulled Wine (熱紅酒, literally "hot red wine") is from the 2025 Winter Limited collection, Winter Tonics in Taiwan Vol. 4 (冬令進補 第四版), named for the Taiwanese practice of eating warming tonic foods through winter. The other three in the set are Pumpkin Soup, Peeled Chili Pepper and Taro Sago — which makes mulled wine the European guest at a very Taiwanese table. This is a hand-decanted 4ml sample vial from my own bottle. Photos are my own swatches on Tomoe River Paper. I'm a collector and I'm always happy to talk ink, so please message me if you have any questions.