This is the Diamine Inkvent 2024 day 4 door:
Day 4’s ink is Diamine Forest Gateau, and unfortunately it’s a scented ink. The base colour is a rich, dark claret that is very saturated, and so doesn’t offer much shading. I used a Lamy Safari medium nibbed fountain pen to test out this ink.
Diamine Forest Gateau is a darker shade of red than last year’s Diamine Bah Humbug. It also doesn’t shade as much as Bah Humbug and it doesn’t have the attractive Chameleon effect. What it does have is a smell.
I don’t like scented inks for two reasons:
- They always smell like cheap potpourri. It doesn’t matter if they’re supposed to smell like violets, strawberries or chocolate, they always smell artificial and sickly sweet.
- They always have terrible ink flow: they’re ultra wet and bleed easily.
Even if I disregard the smell and the flow, the ink itself isn’t too great as it doesn’t offer much beyond a nice base ink colour. There are a lot of dark red inks in the market that have nice shading, better flow, and oftentimes some other point of interest. And they don’t stink.
Today’s bear is one of my favourites because of his unique face style. I like the base ink colour of Forest Gateau so this would have been a nice ink to use for this sketch if the ink itself was better behaved. As it is, I will dumping it out of the pen and cleaning it as soon as this review is up.
This is the bear. He’s got a round, elongated face and ears way at the back of his head. And surprisingly, no name.
I obviously won’t be buying a bottle of Forest Gateau. If you enjoy scented inks, then maybe this one’s for you as it fits nicely enough theme-wise. In terms of practicality it scores low in my opinion because of the scent and because of the flow.
Do you like scented inks? What do you think of Diamine Forest Gateau?
Writing at Large 
Chris
I filled a Lamy Al-Star with a fine nib with this ink, and I did not have any flow issues on either Rhodia or Midori MD. No feathering, no bleeding, no ghosting, and only moderate spread. As you point out, most scented inks are much too wet for practical use, but I’ve found this one to be satisfactory if one fills a pen with moderate-to-dry flow and a fine or EF nib. I had similar experiences with Diamine’s previous Pick Me Up and Spruce, although I found Cinnabun impossible to use. It would even feather on Tomoe River!
As for the scent, I wouldn’t go out of my way to find a scented ink, but it isn’t objectionable to me. Of course, the fragrance is meant to waft gently up from the page while writing, and this one does, reminding me of the chocolate and raspberries of (I presume) its namesake. I’m unfamiliar with “Forest Gateau”, but I wonder if that is the British term for what we call Black Forest Cake here in the US.
Finally, the dry time wasn’t unreasonable for me on Midori MD.
I would not buy a full bottle as I have several inks in this saturated (no pun intended) part of the color wheel, but I’ll happily use up what I filled today.
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miatagrrl
You lost me at “smell.” 😝 But I love that bear’s attitude! 😄
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profesorahb
I can barely handle KWZ’s vanilla-y smell. I have zero tolerance for artificial scents like I’ve seen in inks. I do love the color of this, and I’ve now read enough reviews that the smell isn’t atrocious….but I’ll still be looking for an alternative in the same color.
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