Turtle Dove Black Tea

Tea Advent Calendar – Day 13

I love a turtle sundae, so I’ve been wanting to try this one for a while. Personally, I wish the caramel came out a bit more, but I did enjoy the notes of chocolate and nuts and maybe just a hint of burnt sugar. I’m thankful Shae sent such a generous sample so I can play around with sweetening it and/or adding milk to see how that changes the flavor.

Had some of this last night during my stitch and bitch with a couple of friends. Not much stitching got done but the bitching was very productive. I can probably get a second steep tonight before bed assuming the leaves aren’t molding already. This is still delicious.

A tasty slightly sweet black — I’m not getting strong caramel flavors from it in the first steeping but it’s definitely a tasty dessert-style tea.

One word- WOW. I have been really picky with tea lately. Especially with nut flavors, because I feel like they all taste the same. Ive been trying different companies and none of them have nutty teas that are unique. Except for this one. I have never tasted a blend like this before. I swear I can taste the toastedness of the pecans. I can taste the hazelnut. And normally I dont like chocolate in tea, but really it just accentuates the nuttiness and lends some creaminess to the overall cup. This isn’t artificial tasting at all and the black tea is smooth- not bitter or astringent. I’ll be ordering more. Wish this came in a caffeine-free version.

My cup smells like chocolate caramel nut praline, with maybe a hint of salt, and it’s the best thing ever. Today, the aroma even matches the taste, which wasn’t the case the other night! While it was enjoyable yesterday, in the way of generic chocolate-nut teas, it wasn’t quite at this level of awesome.

The main flavours I’m picking up are chocolate and hazelnut- so essentially nutella. The pecans become more prevalent as I sip through the cup too. Caramel is secondary and comes in waves of gooey goodness.

This has made the room smell incredible. Now I don’t want to leave.

Steep Count: 2

Sipdown! 30/365

This was good. Much better than my recollection of the first cup was. I believe this needs a bit of a careful hand when infusing, otherwise it’s just too strong in all directions (tea astringency, flavouring). Lovely caramelly/chocolatey decadence.

I haven’t written up a note for this tea yet???

I had a bad weekend due to the autistic child upstairs. They are good neighbors. Their TV isn’t loud, I don’t hear them yelling, they rarely have parties. The only issue I have is the running and jumping from their 8 year old autistic son. The running and jumping is a daily occurrence. And every couple of days he has a melt down. This is not something that is in their control, so I try to not let myself get worked up about it. But saturday it began around 7:30. It was still going strong when I left at 10:00, and when I came home at 3:00 it was STILL going on. Sunday was just as bad. And today there was no school, so it was a bad day again.

All that is to say that I wanted to baby myself a little tonight. I made honey toast and a pot of this tea. It is nummy. Probably not going to solve any of my issues, but it is a delicious, creamy tea. Sort of chocolaty (I bet it would be more chocolaty if I could smell it and taste it) and creamy. Just a nice tea that I don’t drink often because I want to reserve it for stressful days like these so I can feel like I am pampering myself.

Turtle dove?! What the hell is a turtle dove? Is that some candy bar or confection reference? I feel some googling is in order.
When steeped this tea smells familiar. It reminds me a little of TWG’s NY Breakfast and American breakfast, of Marriage Freres’s Wedding Imperial, of nutty chocolate teas. When I sip, I get a slightly malty chocolate nut tea. It, like many others I have tried that were similar to it, are a little flat in taste. I get high notes and base notes… maybe the middle is missing? Many of these teas (like Wedding Imperial) required a bit of adjustment and cream to get the perfect cup. I’m guessing the same may be true for this tea. Adding cream and sugar… and yes! Much better! The cream fills things in a bit. It takes over the sip a bit, but then heightens the chocolate and nuts which take turns and sometimes merge in the aftertaste. There is a slight dryness in my mouth after each sip. I would have to think long and hard about if I like this better than NY Breakfast and if it should become a cupboard staple.

Rec’d this as a free sample with my big order – the sample was about half the amount of tea I normally use for my mug, so even though I tried to use less water it still was weaker than I’m accustomed to/than I prefer.
The chocolate/caramel/nut notes that I could detect were pleasant enough, just very faint. I’m not going to rate this numerically because the parameters were not up to snuff for me, but I did enjoy my cup this afternoon at work!

This was included as a sample in my latest Quarter to Tea order, which was very sweet!
I’m not the biggest fan of chocolate teas, but as chocolate teas go, this is a pretty good one. Its creamy and sweet, with a lot of the hazelnut flavors peeking out. The chocolate does not dominate.
As its not exactly my type of tea, I’ll hold off on rating it, but I will say Sipdown!