I own now around 10 different bottles of KWZ's inks (such as Honey, Walk over the Vistula and grapefruit but never tried their IG series) and I have to admit that for a small scale production "Domowej roboty" their inks are certainly no slouch !
Very saturated, most of them have a nice shading and overall they're well behaved inks. The price is very fair given the 60 ml quantity. The opening on these bottles are large enough so that any pen of any size can be dipped in.
As for the vanilla smell, some inks are smellier than others, but you really need to put your nose over the page to smell it on the paper, and it tends to disappear few days after the ink has dried.
Don't shy away from these inks because of their humdrum labeling, they're really worth the money.
Warsaw Dreaming is a wonderful black, it doesn't give you the hard black that you get from some inks but this is more of soft black. I've tested it in a number of pens and across many different papers and the results have always been good.
Thief's Red is currently my favourite red; like it's a nice medium red that's good for all occasions. It's more red than the Cherry and if you're used to the Herbin reds you will find this a stronger colour.
Grapefruit is a fantastic bright orange, it's a deep orange, in my opinion its a stronger colour than the Diamine orange but not as deep as the Cult Pens Deep Dark Orange. When it dries it leans towards orange/red with the emphasis on orange.
All the KWZ inks are excellent quality and value and at the prices charged you can afford to experiment; I would say if you want to try out colours you won't go wrong with KWZ.
I have both Honey and Green Gold, they write well in my Lamy 2000 M (a rather wet nib). I personally love the vanilla scent but might be a problem for sensitive noses.
KWZ (Maroon #2) is a very well behaved ink and has beautiful colour to it (and a weird odour, though not pungent nor displeasing). It looks somehow like dried blood (but in a good way!). I started using it on a Kaweco Sport BB steel nib, which are said to be slightly dry, and it complements it perfectly being a wet ink in my opinion. Although being a red(dish) colour, it is dark enough to be used as a daily ink, as an alternative to brown/chestnut colours.
The shading is somewhat like Sailor Jentle ink (Oku-Yama), which is a more reddish color.
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