2017 Turtle Dove

Sipdown!

I figured since I tried the 2018 version of this (I think) a few days ago, I would knock this one out as well while it’s still fresh in my mind, for comparison’s sake. Using one coin for a ~16 ounce glass tumbler and steeping grandpa-style.

But really, it’s very similar, unsurprisingly. Not unpleasant, but very generic with a sort of bland hay-straw-wood flavor profile. Hints of dried apricot and a touch of astringency at the end of the sip. Some bitterness also started to come out after it steeped for a few minutes, which I don’t remember experiencing with the 2018 version.

Overall, it’s fine but not something I would purchase. But the good news is, there’s a lot to improve on for the other few white tea coins I have! :P

Got this as a free sample with my White2Tea order. This is my first time drinking a white tea coin, so I don’t have anything to compare it to in particular. As others have noted, it was indeed packed tightly. 4 steeps in, the coin was still not coming apart properly, so I took a paring knife and pried it apart, which didn’t change the flavor much for me, so I guess it’s fine. Overall, a good mellow daily I would think, though it was not interesting enough for me to consider buying more. I used Brita filtered water, with temps right off the boil, and discarded the first steep. It never got bitter, but left a little bit of a dry mouthfeel afterwards each time. The infusions turned out a little darker than I expected, with times from 10s to several min towards the end.

Not sure if this affected my brew, but I dropped my gaiwan lid and it shattered, so I was left with no lid during my session.

I am drinking the 2017 Turtle Dove and the Bamboo Dove from the same year. These are two white teas from the same material, with the distinction that the latter is pressed into a bamboo and roasted.

Both are pressed very tightly, and it shows. The turtle dove, despite being more than 2 years old, drinks much like a younger white tea. It has a light body and a very floral character with herbaceous and fruit tree flower aromas. There are also hints of apricot, wood, spices, and honey.

The aftertaste is a little more sweet. It is also somewhat cooling and expansive. Overall, it is a simple and satisfying, but not too engaging tea. There’s nothing in it that would make me want to get more, other than maybe the fact that with the tight pressing, it could age quite well.

edit: Towards the end of the session, after it properly opens up, the aroma of spices intensifies and is quite pleasant to be honest. Also, when pushed hard, the texture is a bit thicker, so maybe I was a bit too harsh on it.

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.