2017 Turtle Dove

Got a free sample of this :D and it came in a cute little mini disk, approximately 8g. I got the 2018 version.

I’m not the biggest fan of white tea so take that into consideration. In the beginning, it tasted like a very light sheng with typical stonefruit notes, mainly apricot along with floral notes, and some hay. As I progressed through the infusions, it got almost too sweet for me, a honey sweet finish. At the end of the infusions, it became somewhat malty, can taste the minerals, some marine but it also became bitter.

Porcelain gaiwan, 8g, 110ml, 185F, 10 steeps, rinse, 5s, 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 1m, 1m15s, 1m30s, 2m

I received this little toucha as a sample with my Teaware House order over a year ago and it had been buried beneath a pile of teas in my drawer for months. In the mood for something different yesterday, I dug it out and steeped the entire sample in my 120ml shiboridashi.

Upon unwrapping, I found inside a handsome silver dollar sized cake with dark camouflage colors and auburn streaks. The tea cake itself had no aroma until hit with hot water and then I was greeted by familiar puerh aromas of leather, smoke, and hay. It was pretty tightly compressed and took about 3 steeps before it began to unravel. The taste was true to the aroma. It began with the smokey, wet forest notes of sheng but unlike sheng, there was no heavy bitterness that followed. In fact there was virtually no bitterness to speak of. As the steeps progressed, I picked up pleasant tobacco/cigar notes, hints of incense, ash, and autumn leaves type woodsiness.

This is technically a white tea but has the profile of raw puerh minus the bitterness. As someone who tends to shy away from sheng due to it’s bitterness, I found this to be a great alternative and can see myself reaching for this once in a while.

I was inspired by Roswell Strange and decided to brew this up. Since I had no clue what to do with it, I followed her instructions and her lead and took half a coin and threw it in a Nordic Mug and just let it steep grandpa style in 185F water. At the same time I made a latte which I reviewed for Sororitea Sisters so this ended up sitting for a long time (long enough that the color changing mug changed back).

When I finally got to drinking this, I didn’t necessarily love it. It’s a little bit smokey and has a leather flavor to it, which was unexpected. It’s not bad per se but its also not really what I hoped it would be. It was a fun experiment though.

I received a sample of this with my Teaware.House order of an adorable 50ml gaiwan. Fun opportunity to try it out for the first time, as I’ve never had a gaiwan this small.

The scent of the dry leaves in a pre-warmed gaiwan is like leather, hay, and dried flowers

The aroma of the leaves after the first infusion is really rich like dried fruit, particularly apricots. Judging by the smell, the taste of the first infusion is not quite what I expected. It’s a bit rustic with hay and leather notes, more similar to the scent of the dry leaf. There’s also a bit of drying feeling in the mouth, the taste of sugarcane, and just subtle hints of dried fruit flavor. I guess I was expecting a lighter and brighter flavor since this is a white tea, and that’s what I’ve come to expect from the best white teas I’ve tried.

Further infusions followed along in this same flavor spectrum. This tea is easy drinking and enjoyable, calming, rustic. If you like those energies, go for it. I think for me, I prefer white teas to be lighter and sweeter than this, and if I want a tea of this flavor type I tend to go toward a sheng. If you blindfolded me and had me drink this without knowing what it was, I’d have guessed it was a sheng.

Very tightly compressed, to the point that I actually find it annoying. It is somewhat tricky to get a decent chunk without turning too much tea into dust, and it takes a long time for the tea to open up.

The tea however is nice. It can go for many infusions, which might be related to the tight compression, and has a pleasant flavor profile with floral notes and honey. I enjoy drinking it but the compression unfortunately makes me lesss excited about the tea as a whole.

Very tightly compressed, easy does it.

The leaf can be bitter which I don’t like in a white tea but hang in there, after experimentation it became sweet and long lasting. This is an interesting tea.

I haven’t tried many white teas, but I very much enjoyed this one. It has a very floral aroma with a sweetness and thickness which both give it qualities of a black tea to me. The taste lingers for a while after you sip it. Definitely packs a punch and reveals nuances in the taste as you brew it — gongfu style in this case.

I received this as part of the W2T club and liked it so much I ended up buying a brick of it. I also ended up spreading the rest of the coins around to others to enjoy.

Clean, sweet, thick, very floral with a long lasting floral aftertaste. There was a little bit of sharpness/citrus? present at the beginning, but it ended up being a very enjoyable session.

Loved this one! It’s a compressed white tea – I got a small coin as a sample, and split it up so I could gongfu some now and try the rest grandpa-style later on. I’m using 5g in about 120ml gaiwan, boiling water, 15 second steeps.

It took a long time to open up, and after the 6th steeping I manually pulled the tightest bit apart and found that the center was still pretty dry. I think this actually did interesting things for the flavor progression, though.

It started out like a dark zambian honey, then got a bit maltier and oxidized tasting, then after I broke it up and exposed the center it turned into strong orange blossom honey. I started getting that sweet sensation over my front teeth afterwards, and watering in the sides of my mouth. It was honey through the 9th with just enough bitterness to make it interesting. Then the 10th-11th moved towards a gentle black tea taste and a bit more mouth-watering astringency, but still with some honey aroma to bring it all together, and finally a bit of that cool air feeling in my mouth after the 11th.

I tried a few longer steeps to finish it off, 25s and then 90s, but it felt done to me – no off flavors or anything, just getting blander than I’d prefer. Still, a nice long run until it hit that point.

I can’t wait to try this one grandpa-style too, and I ran off and ordered a whole brick immediately.

It is very tightly pressed so it makes more sense to get it as a tuocha. That’s how I got it: White2Tea slipped it in as a free sample. Because it is pressed so tightly it is a bit tricky to determine the steeping time at first. First infusions are very light and floral, later it develops nice apricot notes and a little touch of bitterness (in a good way).

This tea has an absolute great aftertaste: long, lingering and gradually changing. You can get many infusions out of it. Quite robust for a white tea.

I am not a big fan of white teas but this one is quite special and satisfying. This is one of those teas that one has a difficulty to come up with a set opinion about because there is a lot going on and you feel like you need to try it several times to process all and arrive to a set conclusion. I am definitely intrigued by this Turtle Dove and probably will order more.