Whispering Pines Tea Company

I wanted an herbal tea the other night and dug this one out of the teas cavorcorax sent my way…i want more. THis is a great tea with (as always) not enough ginger, but enough to make me happy. I am a fan! The rooibos isn’t overly present – so none of that weird woodsy taste…just delicioud, warming, ginger snap like taste. yum!

I do love these Chinese black teas. I knew I would love this one as well although it took me three tries to be able to focus on tasting it properly (with the first one I got distracted with something, and with the other – the water was vile, not sure why, such a waste though).

Smells like piles of honey and caramel! The brew if of a beautiful mahogany color. Every sip is smooth, creamy and with no bitterness at all. I think there are some chocolate notes, although faint (yet they do not feel like a weak and funky chocolate notes that are often found in artificially flavored choco teas). Also some nuttiness that is more on the sweet side. It is just amazing how sweet this tea is. I think there’s a slight hint of fruitiness in the aftertaste like… a ripe pear?

I think there’s going to be different flavors in this tea every time I make it. Which is just great. This definitely belongs to my all time favorite black teas now. Whispering Pines are out of it at the moment, so I guess I am going to hoard the rest of what I have :D Hopefully they will re-stock it one day :)

Aroma of caramel, raisin and longan fruit. This tea is rich, fruity, some malt,very smooth and delightful. there is longan fruit aftertaste lingering in my mouth. No sugar for me but some people may add to elevate it to a dessert level tea. it tastes like Taiwanese black tea. it satisfies my craving for a black tea (Assam just seem too heavy during the Summer). i have to make it side by side with Ai Lao by Yunnan Sourcing.

Sipdown 3 of 2015. Purchased 7/ 2014 – Finished 12/2015

This was a good tea, but I am not crazy about it like everyone else is. For me the base tea was so good that the vanilla was taking away from the awesomeness of the base. I can see the attraction, but for me I will stick with the naked North Winds on this one.

I got my Whispering Pines order in this weekend! Woot Woot! I wasn’t in the greatest of tea moods last night, BUT I was craving chocolate so I had a cup of this.

When I received the sample of this from MzPriss awhile back i didn’t realize at first that it was a flavored tea so I brewed it in a gongFu. Gongfu and this tea weren’t the best mix at least for me. This was much better brewed normally. This was my dessert last night. Chocolate, vanilla and creamy yum. 3 steeps out of this bad boy. Thanks for inventing such an wonderful tea!

I received this in a swap from MzPriss Thank you!

Wow. This smells like the chocolate chip cookies that I have been craving. This has definate notes of coco and bread. There is also a tang at the end of the sip. I think the next cup I will steep a bit less because I also get a slight astringency. Whispering Pines wasn’t really on my radar, but MzPriss gave me a proper introduction.. Thank you!

Backlog. I had this a few days ago and only took a few notes.

(1st steep, pre-boil, 3 min.) Floral, mineral, buttery, with a distinct taste that I associate with high mountain oolongs. Kind of “heavy”.
(2nd steep, pre-boil, 3 min.) This time it’s more buttery and sweet like kettle corn. Has a very “oolong-y” and plantlike aftertaste, which makes me think of chewing on tea leaves. It reminds me of the sensation. Slight mineral taste (not much). As it cools, there’s less mineral, more butter. Still a bit floral. Reminds me of chewing on sugarcane. The texture of it, not the taste specifically. It’s sweet with a fruity aftertaste that’s like pears…or peaches. Can’t quite pin it down.
(3rd steep, pre-boil, 4 min.) I don’t have anything written down for this. From what I remember though, it was a lot of the same flavors but muted. Not really enjoyable. Not bad, just really thin.

To conclude, it’s a decent oolong. To me it just didn’t have very much depth of flavor. There were a lot of the same flavors in each steep, just varying intensities. Pleasant but boring.

UUUUUUGH this is so GOOD! It’s always a bit different, but wonderfully delicious nonetheless. It has a roasty taste with beautiful cocoa notes that get me every time. Yum

Backlog: I am so mad at myself. I wanted to add just a touch of milk to cool it down because I had to put it in my Timolino asap and leave, and I didn’t want to have to wait 5 hours to drink it. I had no milk so I used cream. Big mistakes. Those lovely chocolate notes have just enough room to start and then the cream goes BLEHH and ruins everything. Boo.

I was way eager to try this, but chose it as my first cup of the morning, at 4 AM, so I can’t say that I really let the flavours speak to me, but I did get very obvious and lovely cocoa notes. More on this later, because it’s my ride-the-metro tea. The metro is the french subway train btw lol.

Sipdown (insert melodramatic tune here). Every time I drink this, it reminds me of good chocolate milk: sweet, creamy, with rich chocolate and a bit of malt. So long Golden Orchid. We will see each other soon, I swear.

I’m almost out of Golden Orchid. And that’s just very upsetting. This is my daily “cheer myself up when I miss my baby too much” tea. I feel like I’m having something I shouldn’t have when I drink this. It’s so rich and lovely. I’m going to miss you when you’re gone but we’ll be so happy when we are reunited my little tea!

Yup this tastes exactly like my favorite chocolate milk: creamy, malty, chocolate-y, vanilla magic.

Marshmallows, chocolate, vanilla. Umh. YUM. I want to drink this now. And later. And after that. I might wake up in the middle of the night for it. If anyone at work asks me to try it I’ll say “Oh you won’t like it”. Because I want to keep it all. For me. HA!

Oh my. This is a good one! The dry tea leaves smell like malty cookies with a hint of jasmine. Malty Jasmine cookies! I want to bake some to go with this tea.

The brewed tea smells less floral and more sweetly malty. And the flavor… it’s very sweet on its own, without any additives. I love that. It tastes malty with a honey flavor.

This is a really impressive tea. I was confused to see a Bi Luo Chun as a black tea, since I thought that style was only green. Really, though, this tea is excellent. I don’t care what you call it!

So this has turned into a sipdown Saturday for me which is a good thing since I have quite a bit of tea on its way to me. Finishing off teas that I only have one or two teaspoons of seems like a good idea.

This tea is earthy and fruity. There’s a wood note along with leaves and wet earth as well as a sweet general fruitiness. The combination is very nice.

This came from the Butiki Educational Traveling Tea Box, but since it is labeled as a Whispering Pines tea I thought I’d put it here rather than under Random Steepings.

There is a strong cedar smell to the dry leaves. The leaves are semi-long and wiry, tightly wound and, of course, golden and black in color. Once steeped the cedar smell diminishes quite a bit. The infusion taste of forest floor with notes of cedar. As the tea cools there is a honey like note at the end of the sip.

I really enjoyed this tea. It’s not my favorite, but it is a good consistent Yunnan.

I finally opened up my stash of this yesterday. It will not be here for very long that is for sure. This is such a wonderful and different black tea. I am not sure how to describe the flavors. It is sweet, hints of fruit, but their are also hints of bread.

I received a sample of this from MzPriss and I also got to try this again at the tea party Nicole hosted in KC. Thank you ladies for sharing this one.

I think Nicole put this best. It is a creamy malty tea. It is a flavor I haven’t really had in black tea before, and I really like it. It is an amazing cup that kept me going back for more. I will be excited to pick up some more of this tea.

I used my last bit of this earlier this evening and have been resteeping it all night while switching between watching old Friends episodes and reading . Yes, my life is that exciting. Back to the tea… the combination of floral and mint is so relaxing, and the tea has a natural honey-like sweetness that I really enjoy. There’s also a smoothness and an almost creamy texture which plays well with the honey note. Some steeps (I did five or six, I’m not sure) were almost entirely floral with the honey only becoming noticeable as the tea cooled, but most of the steeps were consistent with the mint, floral, and honey flavors throughout the sip.

I feel like this is a running theme for me and Whispering Pines teas, but I need more of this. Must have all the teas. :)

This lovely tea came to me by way of kimquat. Thank you!

When I say this tea is lovely I mean it. The blend of jasmine and mint with a great green tea base is so soothing. This is the type of tea I’d want in my cup after meditating or at the end of a long stressful day when I just need to relax. It’s also perfect for a Sunday afternoon while watching baseball. :)

I already have this tea on my wishlist, and it’s going to stay there because I need more of this. A lot more.

I ordered this one on a whim when I was placing my Whispering Pines order. It sounded good, and I was looking for more cold tea options.

This one is really nice. More cinnamon than mint this time, but the mint was there, too. Earthy, minerally, just a touch minty. It was energizing and refreshing. It’s a nice summertime morning tea, or while working in the yard tea.

I put mine in my Mist pitcher yesterday around lunchtime, and just let it go. It was about 20 hours from when it went into the fridge to when I had it. That was a good amount of time.

This was a good tea, but I wasn’t blown away. Interestingly, the dry tea smells like pumpkin guts. That’s the second time I’ve smelled tea leaves with this aroma within a week. It’s very pleasant, but I’m a little confused.

That being said, I didn’t pick up on any nuances in the flavor. The flavor here seems heavier. I think this tea may be a little more oxidized, and maybe I just prefer the more lightly oxidized oolongs.