"If Perfume Trees Gin was a romantic letter to our hometown, the launch of Pale Ink in 2021 is a chapter of the gloomy chaos the world witnessed in the past few hundred days."
In the post-national security law Hong Kong of 2021, where the practise of restaurants and other businesses identifying as "yellow" or "blue" to signify their political allegiances has quietly dissipated, it seems that the only colour left is grey. That is the premise that pervades the launch of Pale Ink, a coffee liqueur from the creators of Perfume Trees Gin that seeks to capture the city's conflicted psychological landscape in the wake of the turmoil of the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Named both after a traditional Japanese shade of grey, usuzumi-iro, and a classical Chinese painting technique wherein diluted ink is used to capture the humility and virtues of Zen Buddhism philosophy, Pale Ink is, on the surface, a perfectly innocuous product. Marketed as the world's first sugar-free coffee liqueur, Pale Ink uses Natvia, a zero-calorie natural sweetener extract, as a substitute for sugar, offering a healthier alternative to traditionally sugar-rich coffee liqueurs with just 150 calories for every 100ml of liquid.
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The first batch of 2,000 bottles was created in collaboration with Gary Au, the founder of homegrown cafe chain Urban Coffee Roaster and the winner of the 2021 Coffee in Good Spirits Competition. Future batches will be made in partnership with other coffee roasteries around the world, offering slightly divergent flavour profiles each time that will be sure to appeal to spirits collectors and coffee enthusiasts alike.
The complexity of the double-cold-brewed coffee and the base of Perfume Trees Gin, in concert with the low sugar content, allows notes of white champaca flower and Indian sandalwood to shine through, making Pale Ink more than suitable to enjoy neat, as well as mixing into an espresso martini.
But it's really the grey space of meaning where Pale Ink drives its message home. A glance at its monochrome website reveals pathos-laden quotes such as "The forgetful man is blessed; But since one is given the responsibility of memory from our times, why not plough on with a bittersweet heart?"
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