Lennon Tool Bar Winter Tonics Sesame Oil - 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A warm mid-brown with a golden-olive cast, drying darker and richer in heavy application than most published reviews suggest. Reviewers commonly describe this as a pale or light tan brown — one describes it as a lighter brown, closer to Sailor Suiseki but paler and more yellow-orange, and another found it very pale from a fine nib. My swatches show something noticeably deeper: a toasted sesame brown in the writing line, and a genuinely dark, near-chocolate brown where the ink pools. Expect the lighter, warmer end from a fine nib and the darker end from a broad or wet writer. 

Shading: Strong. The swatches move from a light golden tan through to a dark cool brown at the edges, with clear tonal banding across the larger blots. The darker edges lean cooler and greyer than the warm centres, so there is a degree of tonal separation as well as straightforward light-to-dark shading.

Sheen: None.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Dry.

The interesting bit: This comes from Lennon Tool Bar's 2021 winter set, known in Taiwan as Winter Tonics — four inks named after the ingredients of a Taiwanese cold-weather kitchen: sesame oil, cabbage, silkie chicken and wolfberry. The brand's own note for this one talks about freshly extracted sesame oil hitting a hot pan, and suggests stirring in ginger and chicken to make 麻油雞, sesame oil chicken — the winter dish in Taiwan. Whether the colour actually looks like sesame oil is a question reviewers seem to enjoy: one found it accurate but a touch cooler than the real thing, with a translucency reminiscent of oil spilled on paper. 

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.