Tabac Turc Turk Pipo Tutunu (Turkish Pipe Tobacco)

This tobacco has a very special reputation among the Turkish pipe smokers. It was the only real tobacco they've had, when the access in the global tobacco market was limited, just before the internet shopping was available. The Turkish Pipe Tobacco still is very famous due to old days' memories. An old Turkish pipe smoker just can't do without it even if he has the best products available in his stock. Simply this tobacco didn't let them without tobacco!

Before writing this review I also talked to my friends from Turkey who are smoking this tobacco for more than 30-40 years. Their generation had the opportunity to taste the differences between the different production methods and different tastes of developing tobacco production in years. So these notes are written blending the reviews of some old pipe smokers with my own notes.

Broken flakes are dark colored, strongly smelling locust. Manufacturer says that the tobaccos are packed at 14%- 14,5% humidity. Well it may need drying a bit to light easier. It packs well and burns even. It has a particular taste of tobacco, similar to old days cigarettes, when they were adding less chemicals, enriched with only natural flavors. You will notice the locust flavor immediately. When the smoke goes down, the flavor gets to be bland but noticible. It is not a medium strength tobacco for me, it tends to be strong, but mainly it has a gentle smoking. The locust flavor overwhelms me each time when I begin to smoke a new pouch. This decreases once the tobacco begins to dry and at each smoke when you finish the first quarter.

Suitable for daily smoking. I prefer especially in the morning. With a slow burning and long lasting smoke, I would recommend a Turkish coffee as companion.

You will obtain a very soft, clean, and almost white ash when you finish it. I rarely see this kind of ash.

If you are paying attention to room note please be careful! Even if there are not any interdictions regarding your pipe smoking, do not smoke it next to your spouse and before going to bed please rinse your mouth. Otherwise be ready to sleep on the couch. So, this is a real tobacco, only for the pipe smoker who smokes it for himself.

Thanks to my dear friends, Mr. Tarik Goksu and Mr. Omer Parlar from Turkey for their attribution for these notes.

Thanks to fellow reviewer Alguhan for his very kind gifting of a 50g pouch of this rich, Turkish pipe tobacco to smoke and review.

The 50g Pouch contains an inner factory sealed pouch of brownish and black pressed flakes that were somewhat moist. Even after rubbing out fully and leaving in the open air for several hours the tobacco remains moist.

Wow, I never tasted anything like this. Upon the initial lighting I detected an immediate "spicy" Virginia flavor. It was so spicy that I actually sneezed when exhaling some of the smoke through my nose. Perique? No, just the Izmir and other Oriental leaf (I think), which can really perk up the nose hairs when combined with a quality Virginia. The leaf was easy to keep lit and burned evenly throughout the bowl. The flavor was semi-sweet and deeply rich all-tobacco with no added flavoring detected. Additionally, there's no real Virginia "tang," which tells me a good deal of stoving went into the overall preparation.

For my second bowl I layered this Turkish blend with Five Brothers and got the nicotine hit I was looking for. I went back to smoking just the fully rubbed out flakes with no power boost for bowl number 3. It was easy to smoke and is totally biteless.

I will be disapointed when the pouch is finished. A simply marvelous tobacco that I wish was readily available worldwide.

Thanks again to my Turkish pipe smoking friend Alguhan for this wonderful and unique tobacco!

TPT well deserves the worst packaging award plus the most inconsistent tobacco blend of all times. It's like a lottery, but honestly, you have more chances in the lottery.

Here are some of the possibilities you'll get with a new pouch:

Cut: There's chance tobacco will come out as tiny rubbed flakes OR long broken flakes, OR a bunch of sheets all stuck together OR thick-cut robust flakes OR thin cut soft flakes. OR all above at once.

Casing: let's say one pouch will be locust dominant, the other will be fig and sometimes both in addition to honey and licorice. There's a written recipe of this blend out open for everyone to read, but no one at production cares enough about that recipe (Liquorice extract - Locust - Fig extract - Honey - Benzoate and milk - Sodium Nitrate - PG or DG - Water)

Contents: Yayladag AG 50% - Bitlis AG 22% - Izmir AG 12% - Adiyaman AG 16% (Manufacturer states that Yayladag seeds are the same as Syrian Latakia but mutated over time due to region/soil. So, according to old Turkish State Monopolies and the new company, which took over the pipe tobacco branch of Turkish State Monopolies, Tabac Turc, Yayladag is a non-smoked version/variety of famous Syrian leaf. Not believing for a second.)

Out of the pouch, tobacco will be damp or very dry; you'll never know. And once lit, you will be impressed or depressed, you'll never know. Bite? Hmm.. "you'll never know."

So.. F. Yeah! Roll the dice!

This tobacco(TPT -stands for Turkish Pipe Tobacco) has a delicios taste, its also hard to smoke a bit.. I recommend you to smoke this tobacco with a pipe that has a long shank.

You will feel bad when you have less than 2 or 3 packages of this tobacco. Cause of this, TPT is an addictive tobacco that gives you comfort, jealousy(in a good mood) and an orgasmic taste via some fig flavour.

I have an aged TPT tin older than 50 y.o. After some rehumidifications, I could find a chance to taste the old-aged TPT. I can't find any word to tell the experience. I can say only, that's totally a history that have some victories, successes, wars inside. That's a lot of think that I can't explain.

Thanks, its highly recommended.

Bonus(A photograps from +50y.o. TPT that I took): http://www.berhansoylu.com/tpt.jpg

Earthy flavour that reminded me right away of Villager cigars, hell, you can even call it "dung" touch and not go very wrong. Now for me this is in no way a critique, but a suggestion you're smoking something very natural, real, authentic. The pack itself though smells fruity.

Very wet out of the pack. Hard to keep lit and makes draw somewhat harder as well. However, doesn't burn hot, burns evenly to pleasant grey ash.

High sugar content (like Adiyaman tobaccos if this tells you something), very mild bite that goes away quickly. Strong room note that you would not want other people to smell quite likely.

I did not sense flavouring actually, perhaps this is what makes up the 'mother nature' note, but in no way does it feel like an aromatic. Now I have a bit of a cold, so my nose is not in the best shape. I will update the review when feeling better if the picture changes. *update. Upon fixing my nose and letting it sit for some time, I got the figs notes and something honeyish-sugarish. Still not an aromatic though, too natural and tobaccoish.

Suitable for daily smoke, but I will likely blend it with something drier to compensate for excessive humidity. Will definitely grab another pack should I run into a shop with it. Very original, very true, very natural without 'cigarette' tobacco notes.

Well, this one deserves a full set of stars.

The smell of TPT is amazing. You get the sweet carob aroma and superb tobacco smell before you fire it. The flakes comes a little moist, so i advice to give some 5-10 minutes air dry before firing it. And i highly recomend to use matches for lighting.

It has a unique characteristic. Natural sweetness of Turkish tobaccos gives its base taste. The spicy sweet aroma is definetly not like drugstore aromatics. Samuel Gawith's Firedance Flake is the closest tobacco according to my experience, yet completely different than Firedance.

Relatively bigger and deeper pipes suits best. Also meerschaums are quite fine with it. Just be sure not to pack it too dense and too loose, the tobacco will do the rest with fire.

It has a strong room note. Also you may want to wash your face thoroughly before you kiss your child on the head after this one. Otherwise I assure you, your wife will notice it!

Here on site the description says broken flake but actually it comes in full flake form. I usually buy 5 or more pouches, open all and carefully place them in my rectangular glass jar for storage, while keeping some half pouch in a smaller jar for everyday use. Every time I open that jars i get excited by the superb smell of TPT.

Unfortunately it comes only in 50g pouch and the pouch is a disaster both in design and function. However, i never had bad pouch experience like moldy or dried up tobacco pouches, as some other users mentioned. I am lucky to find it fresh, all the time.

Round up; it's an extraordinary smoking experience, yet can be smoked all day, everyday! Full taste, great characteristics.

First of all let me say here again that, I am quite new to pipe smoking. About 6 months. Before that however I was a tobacco smoker for 23 years. And by tobacco I mean natural tobacco from the fields. Regarding my pipe smoking journey, I tasted this one much later than very well known European brands. Here is my review... Very distinctive "and delicious" taste, like no other. Strong nicotine but smoking is easy. Lights up well. Leaves a nice ash. A little sweetness, a little tongue bite. A true rarity Last comment: If you are a pipe smoker you have to try it before you go...

Normally I'd start my review with an elegant introduction to my review, related to the tobacco at hand. However, this time there isn't much of that, as I haven't tried anything like this, and may never will. I'll spoil the ending to this review, it is an absolutely gorgeous tobacco. By all means. It blew me away into a state of fanboyism. And I rarely have said that about any tobacco I have tried. It isn't just the fact that it is unique, but that it is quite good while being unique. As much as it is packed in a humble, rather ugly looking pouch, and when you open you get confused between the overwhelming, complex, aroma and the poor cut that has no name, It's basically a few long flakes pressed together to form a hybrid between a cake and a plug. Yet the tobacco itself is rich with colour, texture and aroma. It is a bliss to look at, touch and smell. It is easy to cut as well if you plan to store it in smaller jars. And I recommend you do store it. When you get to smoking itself, the tobacco is wet. It isn't moist, it is wet. And requires a considerable amount of drying time. For me it took an hour, and even after, it was still a bit on the moist side. However, to my surprise after the initial light, it stayed lit and smoked excellent. And speaking of the first light. It's an explosions of flavour, one that I haven't even got from the most cased of aromatics. It is a bit overwhelming even. You get sweet, sour, tangy, incense, fruity and in different flavours of fruit, a bit of licorice and a bit of sweet liquor. If I haven't read about this tobacco and examined it thoroughly I'd have said it was drowned in casing, but it was not. But it is a mixture of different oriental tobaccos that is well pressed together using traditional methods that seems to have married the tobacco well. It stays like that for a little while before tobacco starts to play solo. You get a mix of sweetness and fruitiness for a while, like eating dried figs or plums. And it is well complemented by the least of spice, more like a spicy herb than a peppery one, just teasing and tingling with your tongue rather than hammering it with peppery taste. This stays for a decent amount of the bowl, and just when I think it will be monotonous, it switches to a licorice like taste, underlined with a bit of tangy sweetness like fresh molasses. It feels almost like dark rum without the alcohol. And it keeps doing that switch between profiles till the near end of the bowl, in which it returns to a non apologetic sweetness. It turns so sweet and fresh that I feel I am smoking grass or hay rather than tobacco. I haven't had such taste even when having straight bright Virginia tobaccos. Through all that, it required 2 relights, and it never went out, I just wanted to preserve its magnanimous smoke body. And despite that it remained cool and smoked well throughout the ball, without harshness, or biting whatsoever. Just around the end of the bowl it started a bit of overheating. But I won't complain about it after over a 100 minutes of pure joy. It's only drawback if we may call it so, is that it can turn goopy, and I mean a gurgling system pipe goopy. But that was rectified by a pipe cleaner through the smoke hole once or twice and was not a nuisance at all. I think for some reason I regret trying this tobacco, as it is so good yet so scarce that I feel bad when I finished the bowl as it means my small stock of it is a bit depleted. As of this moment, it is only produced and distributed in Turkey. But I surely hope it will go global any day, as it is a delight to have

It is the legend for every turkish pipe smokers.Taste of carob(popular honeyed food in turkey)-honey leads to become fan of TPT.With opening this pouch honey taste spreads and generally dark broken flakes says hello.It needs somewhat !!! (usually 5-6 hours) drying to gain distinctive taste.

This cited description from official site may be best for this secret of tobacco : "The production of genuine pipe tobacco is being performed by use of vintage wooden presses which are placed in special iron casts. Today there are only six companies in the world who posses these types of presses; one in United States, four in Europe, and Tabac Turc in Turkey. This method, which is being maintained by a small number of manufacturers, is done to avoid compromising the quality, which is the most important element of the pipe tobacco production.

The secret of the continued quality and texture is to be found in the cast iron presses, the aged wooden containers, experience, and centuries-old recipes."

And yes its packaging...it is terrible but not concerning me.Is there someone smokes and loves any blend because of packaging ? Not think.I think experince of TPT will forget its worst packaging to real pipe smokers.

Other Turkish pipe tobacco is yayladag...

Note for two turkish tobaccos(yayladag-TPT):these tobaccos only must buy at actual and active tobaccoshops because if you have it from buffets,markets or street sellers you may have faulty,rotten or different tobaccos in the same pouch.

A different experience. Same things about yaylada? go for this tobacco too. If i have to decide between yaylada? and türk pipo tütünü, i would prefer yaylada?.