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Every now and again, whether it is from too much wine or other, we make a mistake that turns out to our advantage. Such is the tale of the 3 wine colored inks. Recently, after pen-cleaning, I loaded two of my pens with wine colored inks. I admit it was late at night and I was really tired. I already had one pen loaded with Montblanc Antoine de Saint Exupery Encre du Desert (whoever came up with that name deserves to be dipped in the ink!), which is a lovely burgundy ink. But I was loading about 12 pens full of ink, and by the time I got to the last couple of pens, I had forgotten what I loaded in the first few pens. So, I ended up with three inks very close in color. Well, my sleep deprivation provided this ink comparison. So, here they are: Taccia Ebi Pen: Lamy Scala with M nib Sailor Manyo Kuzu Pen: Monteverde Prima with 1.1mm stub nib Montblanc Antoine de Saint Exupery Encre du Desert (aka MB ASE Desert) Pen: Montblanc Unicef Legrand with OB nib Paper: Col-o-ring Ink Testing Swatch Paper: Tomoe River 65 gsm Paper: Tomoe River 65 gsm - Each line is written with the 3 inks. The color of all three inks is fairly well saturated. The two that are closest in color is Taccia Ebi and MB ASE Desert. Sailor Manyo Kuzu also has a lovely green-gold cast to it. In terms of performance, all are very well behaved inks, and are moderately wet. Of the three, Sailor Manyo Kuzu is just a bit wetter than the others. Dry times of all three were comparable at about 15-30 seconds depending on nib width.* Showthrough and bleedthrough were minimal with all three, but Taccia Ebi does have some bleedthrough on lesser quality papers.* None are water resistant, but Taccia Ebi seems just a bit more water resistant than the others. * In terms of sheen, Sailor Manyo Kuzu wins hands down. MB ASE Desert has some sheen, and Taccia Ebi has a small amount. In terms of shading, again Sailor Manyo Kuzu shades very nicely, but so does MB ASE Desert. Overall, all three inks are excellent! But, Sailor Manyo Kuzu outperforms the other two, but MB ASE Desert is close behind. * Sorry, I did not photograph these.