As you all know, I am always in search of the world’s perfect purple.  Yama-Budo has long been one of my favorite “wine” purples, which is why I was excited to try Diamine Claret.  The name itself made me think of a smooth, rich purple that pulls toward burgundy.  What I got however, was…Yama-Budo, have you had too much to drink?  Let me elaborate on that. For this review I decided to ink up my Visconti Rembrandt with 23k DreamTouch nib.  It is generally a wet writer and handles ink well.


Rather than the rich color I expected, what I got looked more like a watered down version of Yama-Budo without any of the positive attributes.  I was so saddened by this I decided to do a comparison with Yama-Budo.

Ink Journal Pages:


One of the problems with Diamine Claret is the flow.  My pen felt like it was struggling a bit, and I had quite a few hard starts.  I have used Yama-Budo in a variety of pens including this one and have not had this problem at all.

There was no sheen produced by Claret that I could see which always disappoints me a little.

Here are some videos of how the lines went down with each pen.  These were on CF paper, whereas the ink journals are on tomoe.

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Yama-Budo Sheen:


The Diamine Claret is of course a cheaper ink than the Pilot Iroshizuku, but I would say that if you are looking for a great wine colored purple, Yama-Budo is well worth the extra money ^_^

The Team: