Whispering Pines Tea Company

Thanks Brenden for this tea sample!

A shockingly wonderful surprise arrived in the mail…Chai!
What made this arrival more glorious was that I didn’t pick up my mail until it was 30 degrees out. Old Man Winter was blowing his icy breath across my face. Burr!

I stepped gingerly through a pile of dry leaves and into the house arms loaded with two bags of groceries and the mail. I wondered outloud, “What’s this mail from Whispering Pines?”
No matter how lame it sounds, we all have a ‘happy dance’ even if it’s not a literal dance. I have an internal ‘happy dance’, or ‘victory whoop’ that happened last night when I opened the mail and saw two samples of Chai!

I’ve reviewed Fujian Black Tea, which is the high quality very chocolaty tea base for this Chai. I loved it and ordered some for myself! For Brenden to use this as the base for this Chai was brilliant. (Most people use bland black tea’s for Chai, which I just don’t understand!)

The Fujian Black Tea is so flavorful that it blends with the spices weaving together the malt and spice gently without any harsh edges. It reminds me of eating a spice cookie and sipping a cup of creamy cocoa.

My preferred way of drinking this Chai is with cream and clover honey, not sugar. The honey gives a bakery taste to the tea like graham cracker, and the milk or cream enhances the cocoa-malt flavor and creaminess.

If you want a traditional Chai with more spice Whispering Pines Golden Chai is for you and it’s lovely.
Chocolate Chai is smoother and mellow without much bite from spices. The chocolate is more cocoa than candy bar. Don’t expect a gooey Hershey’s Kiss.

As soon as I began drinking my Chai, the tea warmed me up from head to toe, rapidly chasing Old Man Winter’s frosty chill away. A comforting, satisfying and festive mug of tea!

High marks for this one! Quality blending, Brenden!

Two mugs of Zen Master kicked my sinus headache to the curb; worked better than meds. I’m going to need to buy more.

I’m headed out for a walk with a friend, so I decided to make the last of this sample from Dexter3657 to take with me.

Mmm, cinnamon.

I don’t mind the rooibos, I love the cinnamon, I’ve added brown sugar and milk, things are good.

This is (a lot of) cinnamon with (some) rooibos. It’s actually really nice treated like a chai, as there’s no honey, nor is there any cracker.

So. Cinnamon Rooibos tea? Y. Very nice with some brown sugar and coconut creamer. I’m not sure I’d order online just for this, but I do have rooibos and cinnamon in my cupboard I can play with.

Whoops! Thanks to Dexter3657 for this!

From Considering a new Travelling Tea Box

This has a beautiful golden appearance that suggests quality. The instructions said to use 1/2 tsp, but I used my standard 1.5 grams (though increased the water to 8 oz from my usual 6).

This was an amazing tea. I was initially hesitant at the Yunnan-like damp forest aroma, but there was an underlying note of cocoa, and I didn’t find it off-putting. The flavor is HUGE. I won’t use as much next time, yet the strength was wonderful: a big, complex, mouth-filling tea. The flavor changed subtly in my mouth and as the cup cooled, making it hard to identify specifics, but it retained the forest/cocoa notes in the nose. The finish was also delightful and strong. A great tea.

There is only about 5 grams left in the box, but I’m afraid I’m claiming it.

I should probably give this a 100, but I’ve always been a tough grader.

This is one of my favorites out of our 9 recently launched chai blends! It’s very creamy and has lovely chocolate notes!

Our Chocolate Chai is made with expertly-ground 100% organic spices and our Fujian Black Tea, which has heavy notes of dark chocolate and a clean malty finish! This chai is smooth and energizing, and goes especially well with milk and sugar!

Note: Do not expect to be kicked in the mouth with chocolate flavor! There is no chocolate in this blend. The chocolate flavors in this chai are strong natural notes found in the tea itself. Adding sugar and milk often accentuates these notes. Enjoy!

The Perfect Cup:
Steep 1 tablespoon in 8 ounces of boiling water for 5 minutes.
2nd infusion for 7 minutes.
3rd infusion for 10 minutes.

Ingredients: Black Tea, Organic Ginger, Organic Cardamom, Organic Cinnamon, Organic Cloves

Caffeine Content: Medium-High

http://whisperingpinestea.com/chocolatechai.html

I’m still kind of shocked that no one else has done a tasting note for this one. It’s really good! It’s very smooth and sweet. It reminds me of a caramel and chocolate brownie. Mmmmm :]

Mmm this is a marvelous tea :) so smooth with caramel and chocolate notes.

This does not taste like honey, this does not taste like Graham Cracker.
It’s just a fancy name for a cinnamon rooibos. Add cinnamon to rooibos and this is what you get.
Pass….

Tea #35 from Another Traveling Tea Box

This tea is creamy and buttery with flavors of almond milk, peaches and freshly steamed broccoli and spinach popping up. It’s less floral and more green tasting than I was expecting. There’s also a lovely dry wine feeling to drinking it.

What surprised me most is that (at least when Western steeping) the first steep was the most pleasant. The quality held up for about four steeps, but the first one was easily the creamiest and sweetest. The veggie taste started taking over in 2 & 3.

It’s a very pleasant milk oolong, and honestly on that first steep (which was pretty much perfection), I was having a really hard time figuring out if it was going back in the box or not. But the following steeps made me realise I have others I prefer to this one. I’m still really glad I got to try it!

Traveling Tea Box C #13
This is a very roasty oolong. I steeped it 4 times. The first steep smelled like burnt coffee but was definitely a creamy tea. Dark chocolate is not supposed to be creamy. It’s bitter. I took a whole class on chocolate and tasted what raw cacao tastes like and all types of high quality dark chocolate taste like. And this resembles that perfectly. And I love it. I will be keeping the last teaspoon of this :) thank you Shelley_Lorraine for adding this! I had this all day today!

I love jasmine tea, so I felt guaranteed to like this one. It is indeed a tasty tea, although I couldn’t detect any coconut flavor. The jasmine flavor was also weaker compared to all other jasmine teas I’ve had.

(Sample from silentrequiem. Thanks!)

This is a very nice roasted tea with an interesting creamy mouthfeel.
When steeped light this tea had a nutty roasty taste with a creamy mouth feel, delicate and nice.
When steeped a little longer about 3 minutes and so on the taste was very roast and nutty still a lot more so than on the lighter steep with pleasant vegetal notes and a creamy sweet almost buttery smooth mouth feel , very nice.
Steeped at about 10 minutes this tea is much darker still roasty and nutty but this time also slightly woody, the vegetal notes were still pleasant tho now slightly bitter but not in a bad way at all and the creamy smooth mouth feel was still very much present.
Check out my blog post with photos
http://toadsteablog.blogspot.com/2013/10/medium-roast-jin-xuan-by-whispering.html

This is slow-roasted at Whispering Pines headquarters! Roasty, creamy, and caramelly-sweet with a earthy, woody background, this tea reminds us of the redwood forests of northern California! This tea is very lightly bitter with a long lingering aftertaste and high energy level!

Notes of: Roasty, creamy, woody, sweet

Ingredients: Oolong tea

Caffeine Content: High

Because this tea is slow-roasted in very small batches, we limit the purchase to 1 ounce per customer per order.

Pretty sure my feed isn’t working here, but oh well.

This was a sad sipdown, but I appreciated the chance to try it (Thanks KallieBoo!). This is just a really clean, buttery, sweet green tea. It brightened a grey day a little bit even!

Pictures:
http://atinyteapot.tumblr.com/post/66498456759/the-sleeping-bear-blend-from-whispering-pines-tea

I’m trying insanely hard to catch up on all the samples I have floating around! This is another from KallieBoo! (Thank you!)

When I first say the dry leaves here, I thought it was an herbal blend. There’s a large amount of pine needles here and it’s easy to lost the tea. The smell is faint, but fresh and reminds me of fall and camping.

The taste is pretty much what is promised by the smell. A light, fresh tea with subtle sweet floral and a lovely buttery mouthfeel. The pine adds a flavor that I can’t describe as anything but, well, itself. But it makes you think of dewy morning grass, a chill morning air and a crackling bonfire in the distance.

This is a really well-balanced and delicious tea. It’s relaxing and refreshing at once and really hits the spot today.

Our top-selling green tea blend is back in stock! Our June harvest White Pine was harvested from a grove near Lake of the Clouds in the Porcupine Mountains, Michigan on June 4th. This month’s harvest yields only 10 ounces of The Sleeping Bear Blend, so get yours while it lasts!

This harvest is even better than the last, with an indescribable sweetness brought out by a longer heating process!

http://whisperingpinestea.com/the-sleeping-bear-blend.html