Montblanc did not release a new Christmas Ink this year, as I discovered when I went to the Montblanc Boutique in Manchester last week. Instead last year’s ink White Forest has been released again. It is a shame as I was looking forward to a new, scented Christmas ink. As far as I know there have been four different Montblanc Christmas inks until now:
- The brown ink from 2005, also called Cookies and Spices
- The ink from 2006. Same colour, spicier cinnamon smell
- The red ink from 2007 with a vanilla smell
- The green ink from 2008, with a pinewood smell. The first one with an official name: White Forest
Unfortunately many cleaning products have a pinewood smell, not making this smell a good choice in my opinion. The 2009 ink has the same name, packing, colour and I couldn’t notice a different scent when I was in the Montblanc Boutique.
According to messages on the Fountain Pen Network the re-release of the same ink might be because of problems with last year’s Christmas ink. I remember that the bottle I bought back then was difficult to open, as if there was a vacuum inside. It even kept the white foamy insert of the lid on the bottle, separating the insert from the lid even though it had been glued on in the factory. When I moved this foam disc away you could hear the air being sucked in and there was this something mould-like floating on the surface.
Well.. If I feel very christmasy I might order some Christmas scented inks from De Atramentis instead, but postage to the UK is not cheap and when I ordered from them before there were some unidentifyable “things” in the package, including lots of hair, which put me off.