I am pretty new to fountain pens and very new to inks, so I'm not the ideal person to do a review. Since writing this review, I've come to realize that two things I like less about this ink are that it dries on the slower side and even sometimes smudges when dry. Oh well, take it easy on me, this is a first try. I tried to adjust the color in Photoshop so it matches what I am seeing.

Thank you for this. That looks very nice indeed. I will see if my local ink seller carries that color. I haven't seen it before, so it must be new.

Good write, Amin. Gorgeous aamof.

To my eye, it looks as if PR named the color perfectly. Black Cherry skin, indeed!

Beautiful color -- and yes, it does look like a black cherry. I may have to try some.

Great review - THANKS! Love the color, but as a leftie, I couldn't handle slow drying and easy smudging.

Thank you all for the kind words. It's a unique color I've been using quite a bit. Southpaw, glad I could help you avoid the smudgefest!

Nice review. I love this ink. I use it in my favorite Parker 51 as my standard combo for grading papers. It's much warmer than standard reds and is therefore less harsh. Hey, when you're giving kids bad news you might as well do it gently. I haven't really experienced any drying issues...yet.

That looks like a nice ink color! nice review

Good job on the review. I bought a bottle about a year ago at the Paradise Pen store in Troy, Michigan. It lives in a Sailor 1911 with a fine nib. I like the ink because it still looks very contrasty when applied with a very fine nib. You are correct about the long dry time, you have to be careful not to smear the ink, but the results are worth it IMHO. BTW if anyone makes it to the Paradise pen store in Michigan, ask for Kathy and tell her Larry sent you. Great lady, but she has collected altogether too much of my money!

I had a bottle, or maybe still have it. THe color does not age well it seems after a year, it is more of a reddish brown than the dark cherry color.

Noodler's Tienanmen (sp?) is a similar color, with a little faster drying, and more red tones in it.

Thank you, great review. I like this color, a bit better than PR Burgundy Mist I think. It reminds me of a darker version of Noodler's Antietam.

Not at all....If you've seen the ink, you're qualified to write an ink review!

Thanks for taking the time to do this review, Amin. It looks like a really nice colour. I love the colour red...and my Waterman Havana Brown has become a fast favourite, so this ink sure looks like a winner to me! I know what you mean by the slow drying times, though; this is a property of my PR Tanzanite and PR Plum inks as well. They are nice rich colours, though. Oh, make sure you don't leave them in pens with clear barrels/inkview windows for too long, or they might be permanently stained (because of the ink's high saturation)

A friend of mine owns a wonderful pen shop...and she is also a PR dealer. When I saw this color, I knew I had to have a bottle and called her. She did not have it in stock but told me I could make my own using PR inks. Here is the recipe she gave me:

two parts Burgundy Mist
one part Copper Burst
one half part Plum
one part Black Magic Blue
one part Midnight Blues

I did pick up a bottle of the Burgundy Mist as it looks pretty close. It is a nice color but I think I still need (as in 'will die without') a bottle of Black Cherry.

Thank you all for the nice words. Glad to be able to introduce others to this. It was disappointing to hear from KendallJ that this ink doesn't age well...

I am a black ink guy, using Aurora Noir most all the time.

However, the color of this ink you reviewed really caught my eye. I went to my favorite ink dealer and she didn't have it, but Burgandy Mist looked pretty close. It was but it wasn't 'it.' So...I headed in to another pen dealer today and nabbed a bottle of Black Cherry. All I can say is...WOW. What a wonderful color!

I've decided to write my next journal alternating with Black Cherry and Midnight Blues. The two together really knock my socks off.

There goes seeing life in only black and white.

I love PR Black Cherry, but I've had two bottles go from that lovely burgundy to dark brown. No SITB, or anything of that sort: the ink distinctly changed color. The current bottle has what appear to be crystallized ink on the sides.

(I've had two bottles of PR Burgundy Mist do the same thing. This week, I am using Sheaffer Burgundy, which is well behaved, and glowering at the PR bottles.)

Darn, this really bums me out. Does the dried ink change color with time?

If it doesn't change color after drying, maybe I need to buy a fresh bottle, write my fingers to the bone (not giving the ink time to turn sour) and let that be that.

You say Burgundy Mist does the same thing? This might require a letter to PR!

(Just in case there is no solution, do you know anybody else who sells about the same color? This one REALLY caught my eye.)

You said you had two bottles turn on you. Have you ever had another bottle NOT?

The dried ink doesn't change color. And the thing is, the second Black Cherry and Burgundy Mist were replacement bottles, sent to me at no cost by Terry (?). I feel awkward about complaining again. I might just buy a new bottle of the Black Cherry, and give it one more try.

I have another post about ink combinations and MAJA incl. this link PR ink Link and you will see at the bottom of the page that the page author noted problems PR had with 'red' colored inks. ones that have been discontinued.

BTW, I already emailed PR early this morning about this. I'll report back here what they say.

I just got an email back from the PR people.

Here it is:



I hope this helps.

Hi Amin,

Thank you for the wonderful review. It certainly looks like an ink I have to add to the collection . Like Roger said, aptly named, but to me it is more like Black Cherry Juice .

Warm regards, Wim

Good to know, that I'm not the only one with Burgundy Mist. A year ago, I purchased several inks from The Writing Desk in the UK, among them PR Burgundy Mist and J. Herbin 'Pousserie de Lune'. I remember comparing the two, where BM was a lightly darker, more saturated Burgundy shade with little brown. A year later, the BM is now a brown ink, with no red traces, rather sepia, while the PdL is still a nice Burgundy.

Burgundy is probably my favorite color. I'm wearing a burgundy sweatshirt, my raincoat is burgundy and since I live in the Pacific Northwest, you all know that I wear my raincoat a good part of the year

My favorite ink still is Sheaffer burgundy but I also have Noodlers Burgundy, PR Burgundy Mist, MB Bordeaux, PR Black Cherry and Noodlers Nightshade.

Of all the burgundy inks still made that I have tried, I like the Noodlers Burgundy best. My PR Black CHerry is 2 years old now. It hasn't changed color but every time I write with it, I feel like I've filled a pen with Dr. Pepper.

It is an interest shade but it is not burgundy.

I am mostly a black and white sort of person. If I was an artist, I'd prefer to do ink drawings to colorful paintings. In photography, I favor B&W and sepia to color, unless the color has a specific purpose in my photo.

My ink shelf has a number of bottles, colors I've picked up over the years. I buy them but rarely use them.

However, Black Cherry has really caught my attention, as well as PR Midnight Blues. I'm doing a journal in just these two colors, something unusual for me.

I am hoping that Velma's curse of the transfiguration of Black Cherry will not be a nightmare I record in my journal somewhere down the road, in a different color than Black Cherry, that is.

(Might not be so bad because I just learned my favorite pen dealer is getting a small stash of Noodlers Ink colors in stock...yummy!)

to me, i find most brownish inks don't age well. the only ones I've used that didn't take on yellowish tones or reddish tones were Levenger Cocoa and Penman Mocha. But i'm starting to tire of very saturated inks in general. never imagined i'd sayt hat. I tried Black Cherry and while the color was nice, I found it a bit dry writing. may have just been me though.

If that's true, then perhaps the best way to approach this problem is to buy fresh bottles and write furiously, hitting the bottom of the bottle before it has time to turn sour.

but then all my other inks would get jealous.

actually, i have problems with them not aging well *in the pen* as well. which just means I have too many inked pens and not enough time to enjoy them all.

Maybe it's time to start buying those mega-million lotto tickets.

I have had much the same experience with 'Burgundy Mist'....

I agree with your assessment...I have the Burgundy Mist and was not particularly impressed. The Black Cherry, however, was a nice dark color. I think when I'm low on one of them, I'll mix the black Cherry and Antietam. Should be interesting.
And, yes, the Black Cherry seems better in the fine pens.

How long is "too long"?? I'm thinking of getting some of this and WAS going to use it in my new Pelikan M800, when it arrives.

Today has the Black Cherry arrived... I was a little bit afraid of it's journey from the US to Czech Republic, but all went well and the bottle is on my desk... And a small amount already in my italic nibbed Pilot 78...

I couldn't decide between Black Cherry and Chocolate, but now I'm very content... The colour is beautiful... And the consitency,..
Many thanks to FPN and it's review index!!

This happened to me with PR Fiesta Red. I dearly love Private Reserve inks and have a half dozen or more in regular use, however I don't think that I'll be buying a red ink from Private Reserve any time too soon. (On the other hand, their blues are fantastic!)


Dave

PR has a way of coming up with the exact perfect name for their ink colors. Copper burst actually looks like copper without being metallic.

Great review, I'll have to pick some up.

Very nice color. Thanks for the review.

If you care trying this other, much simpler recipe, you will get the exact same color;

1 part Aurora Black.
5 parts Waterman's Red.

I doubt it will taste quite the same

I do like that colour.

very original ink, I will have to think about it for use in my next pen .

I got a KCat vial via the Ink Exchange (thanks!) and could not wait to crack it open. However, I found very little color! It took a second look to realize that it did indeed have a red overtone. I was writing using a daylight “OTT Lamp”, and the calibrated scan shows the same thing.

I'm trying a few more changes in my ink scans this time: A full 200 dpi for the sample text, so the strokes show color properly. The doodle area is presented larger, so you can see variation in stroke and get about the same screen width. The x-closeup is the same, showing 3200 dpi (the real optical limit of my scanner) and just one letter, so you can see feathering.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

I thought I'd also present this, showing the Hue characterization and the web color number etc. Personally I'm going to use the Hue angle (339° averaging a spot a little smaller than the pen stroke width of 0.017 inch) to file my samples in the ink book in order. Some times it's hard to decide exactly where to put it by eye.

Click to view attachment

On some screens it doesn't look like it has any color at all; on another it even looks bluish! Hopefully the vertical pink bar in the middle of the above illustration (vary the brightness) will show you what the color is supposed to be.

So, is something wrong with my sample? Or is my pen just too wet?

I'm not sure what went wrong with your sample but the Black Cherry that I recieved from Swisher looks nothing like what JDlugosz reviewed. To me his looks more black and grey. Perhaps it was a 'bad?' or contanimated sample?

I filled my parker 51 with the PR Black Cherry and it look like just that, the skin of a black cherry full of deep red and some brown. If you like the first review of this color you'll love the ink!

Mine definitely looks like the original poster's review. I bought mine about a year ago from Pendemonium, and had it scented with their cherry scent. Alas, it appears they don't offer that scent any longer, but I can say it makes for a brilliant experience with this ink. Really makes it come to life!