Juniper Ridge

Belated Merry Christmas Steepster! I finally regained my sense of taste and smell on Christmas day which was awesome, but I am still fighting a hacking horrible cough as of today gahh. I ordered myself a tin of this and the white sage tea with my bfs present, and after reading about pine needle tea being helpful for colds, I thought I’d try it tonight at the lake :) very fitting setting.

The smell is so much pine trees I thought I was in the forest! Wow! Sap and bark and trees..all the smells of camping. I steeped the tea bag (wish it was loose lol) for about 3 mins. The taste is nice and fresh, pure piney goodness, a hint of sweetness and citrus. Hopefully it helps this silly cough to go away! Overall, so far pleased about the flavor and hoping it helps!

Thank you to Nichole for sending me a few bags of this to try! It had been on my wishlist for some time so I’m pretty excited to be able to try it now.

This smells incredible, very fresh but also woodsy. I’m definitely picking up on some citrus and pine. I was expecting long, green needles but it looks like everything has been ground to a powder inside the bags. I steeped this for a full 10 minutes and when I pulled the bag from the water I was left with a golden liquid, almost honey-colored, but also a pretty thick film on the surface. My husband tried this and said it tasted like pickles (???) but I think it’s pretty nice. I can still smell the citrus and pine and the taste is very light, almost a little watered. While it isn’t as amazing as I thought it might be, I am still enjoying it. I’m sure would be a hit ice-cold so I think I’ll try that next.

This is a very interesting tea. Oddly refreshing. Sweet and Savory all in the same sip. Thanks to thelastdodo letting me nab it in their last sales stash. Not sure how I feel about it so I’m not going to rate it, but I am glad I tried it.

Here are the rest of my ramblings:

http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/05/10/white-sage-wild-mint-tea-juniper-ridge/

I purchased this on a whim last week at the Scarlet Sage, an herb store in San Francisco. I’ve always been curious about this blend and wanted to finally try it. The tin is lovely but the tea comes in paper teabags, which is kind of a shame.

The aroma of this reminds me of Thanksgiving. I think sage is one of the primary ingredients in stuffing. It smells and tastes more strongly of sage in my opinion, but the mint is present and provides a really good contrast to the sage. This has an almost sweet quality to it which is odd and not what I was expecting.

I did a bit of research and found out that sage is good for digestive problems (as well as mint), so this seems like a nice after dinner or bedtime type of tea. I might like the smell a bit better than the taste, but it’s a decent herbal either way. I’m sure I’ll be glad I have this the next time I get a cold. Also I felt the smell was very relaxing and then I read this piece on the web that sage aroma lifts the spirits. Nice!

http://www.healwithfood.org/health-benefits/sage-medicinal-salvia.php

I cannot say I LOVE the flavor but it is intriguing and fun.

I got both of Juniper Ridge’s teas for Christmas from my roommates. I love the idea of wildcrafted tea. I chose this tea shortly after unwrapping it. Hey, it was Christmas! Although they are in teabags, I don’t mind much. Loose would have been cooler, but I digress.
I was nervous about this tea. It smelled exactly like the little douglas fir that was our Christmas tree. I kind of like the smell of sweet pine, perhaps the tea would be better?
Well, I did not get too much piney flavor as I thought. Which is good. The stronger tastes that I noted were honey and lemongrass. The pine was sweet and not at all like those tree-shaped air fresheners. I could sense the sun and the wind whipping through the fir trees. It was a light and airy and not heavy and overtly pungent. Hey, I may keep drinking this one!

This was such an interesting herbal tea: While the peppermint is the dominant aroma and flavor, there were subtleties of sage as well in its aroma (although I didn’t taste any sage to speak of). Drank straight up without honey, and it was lovely: The peppermint lingered.

This will be my last logged tea before leaving florida tomorrow for my cross-country road trip and move to Seattle, Washington!
Living in the Pacific Northwest has been my dream since visiting 2 years ago, and now it will be my home. 
My boyfriend and I are making the drive all the way from south Florida, and plan to stop in Roswell, NM, then the Grand Canyon, then California and Yosemite, and then most amazing of all, onto the Redwoods!! I will finally see them for real. I also cannot wait to see Oregon,  which I feel so connected to even though I’ve never been there.
My plan is to study the forests and determine my place in the environmental and forestry field. There is nothing I love more than the trees and forests, and I want to be near them always.

A friend of mine brought this tea over who funnily enough got it from a friend in Seattle, while the tea itself comes from Oregon. 
The magical scent of this tea alone immediately makes it the best tea ever. It is the tea to end all teas for me.
It smells like a forest, and burning a Frasier Fir candle at the same time transforms my room into one. I cannot wait to be in a real forest and to drink this tea among the trees.

What was even more special about my first time having this tea was that my favorite song ever came on my pandora while drinking it. The song is When I Grow Up by Fever Ray http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F-CpE73o2M&feature=youtube_gdata_player
When I hear it, I understand why I am alive. I know where I want to be and what I want to do. 

I can drink this tea forever.
I can’t explain the tree flavor other than its lovely, and has a lemon-like concentrated end.
Its super calming.
I also feel a special energy from this tea. Sort of like when I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a tree, and I get this incredible relaxed and happy feeling in my back. Its hard to explain.

This is literally, my Cup of Tree. 

West coast!! here I come!!!!! Woohoo!!!!

OH MY what a night I had last night! My coworker gave me some of this tea, and my husband and I had it last night. As I sipped the herbaceous and slightly menthol tisane, I grew very sleepy. I instantly fell asleep once I went to bed, and had the most vivid, intense, insane, technicolor dreams of my life!!!!!!!! I actually shot up in the middle of the night, woke my husband, and asked him if he was having the dreams of the century! He said, “No.” and went back to sleep! I followed him, and continued to dream, dream, dream!

When I woke up I looked in my herb books, but none of them recommended sage for dreaming. I guess I am my own special snowflake in this regard, because I never experienced anything like this! It did say that it was good for headaches – my husband had one last night, and I asked him if it felt better, and he said that it did!

I had one bag left over, and gave it to my other coworker! I am in no rush to go through that again!

I chose this one for Afternoon Throat Soothing. If you are going to be sick around the holidays, why not drink pine needles!!!? :) It is doing the job admirably. I love the lemony gentle pine flavor. I plan to steep this one until I leave for the day, because something warm for my throat is making all the difference.

I’m freezing today, and already drank up my allotment of caffeine. A friend that I work with gave me two of these little bags of tisane, so I thought today would be the day to try errr, pine needles!

Well I’ll be – it’s really good! It definitely tastes like a pine tree – sort of menthol-y but not quite menthol-y and lemony but not quite lemony and smoky but not quite smoky! It tastes like Winter. It’s oddly soothing. It’s making me very happy that my work friend thought of me and shared some with me :)

I took the bag out after 3 minutes, and I think it will be a pleasant resteep! I’ll let you know later because we are having a fire drill!

EDIT: back from fire drill! It makes a nice second steep, but the first is the best one with all the Winter Magic in it.

This was an impulse buy at Whole Foods. A very calming, meditative tea. Reminds me of a really nice incense perfume—balsam, a very light floral, a feeling of clean. But not cleaning product, thankfully.

Bagged
Aroma when Dry: spicy, cool, earthy, herby
After water is first poured: spicy sweet sage, hints of mint
At end of first steep: bright sage notes, laced with mint
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: woody brown
Staple? Yes medicinally
Preferred time of day: as needed medicinally
Taste:
At first?: earthy,creamy,crisp, spicy sage woody notes, mint in close
As it cools?: notes open, layer, get thicker, creamier
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? yes, mostly the earthy, silky sage notes

Second Steep (5 min)
At first: Earthy herbal water
As it cools: sage notes thicken into tea again

Third Steep (8min)
Earthy herbal water
Fourth Steep
Earthy herbal water

This is a really soothing, nicely fragrant tea. It comes in tea bags, which I rarely use, but they don’t seem to detract at all from this tea. The mint is strong, but balanced with the sage. Naturally caffeine-free, it’s the perfect tea for evening relaxation.

This is very nice. The overall taste is very minty and crisp, but I also taste a hint of peppery warmth … not super spicy or anything, but just a hint of kick toward the tail. The sage gives a nice earthy tone to the cup. Very nice to curl up to as I am preparing to head to bed … it’s SO late! What am I doing up?

Tasting this tea immediately reminded me of the scent from the juniper trees my parents would always buy as part of the Christmas tradition of decorating a ‘Christmas tree.’ While the taste of the tea is fairly mild and the aroma is unique, it does have one unpleasurable side effect: headaches. Never once have I prepared this tea and come away without a mild headache coupled with moderate unease – the kind you get when you’re sensitive to anti-histamines. If you can sample this tea without any ill effects, I’d say more power to you. For me, I can’t handle this particular brew.

Backlogging from a day or two ago. This is a delicious and unusual tea. It does have the expected “piney” or evergreen flavor, but it has a subtle sweetness that was unexpected. I would recommend shorter steeps or lower temps, since it got sort of sludgy on me.

SIPDOWN – been drinking this nearly all day! :)

Backlogging this refreshing cup! Actually…I had two…see other notes :)

I forgot how much I like this…actually…I’m going to up the rating! I needed this after a crazy day! Whew! White Mint, Sage, Pine…lovely! I want to bathe in this!