Whispering Pines Tea Company

Complex with the chocolate absolutely coming through. Delicious.

I’ve never had Dian Hong before and loved every sip.
It absolutely has milk chocolate notes. As much as the numi chocolate puerh I have in the cupboard.
And I over brewed it by ?? minutes and it was still great with no bitterness.

Made a pot of this yesterday in my new big 4-cup (I think) teapot I got at the Queen Mary Tea Emporium when I was there last week. Very pretty, pansies, very british porcelain.

This is just as good as it has always been. Yunnan Gold teas are my favourite type of black tea and this one is no exception and is in fact a good exemplar. The dry leaf is so nice and pretty little curls and steeped, it’s delicious. I’m going to resteep the leaves today and have another pot. Mmm.

…what MTCHYG said…ditto

Tasting Alice has been the Eureka Moment of my fine tea odyssey. I don’t have the expertise to define exactly what makes this wonderful tea from Whispering Pines so magnificent, but it is certainly the finest cup of tea I’ve ever tasted. I realize that it sounds as though I’m heaping a ton of hyperbole into this review; please believe me – this tea is exceptional and deserves all the praise I’m throwing at it.

Disclosure: I am a huge fan of jasmine in tea. If you are not, this may not be a flavor profile you would love. I appreciate the scent of both tea and jasmine – having both fragrances surround me just enhances the taste of both for me when a truly great black or oolong tea base is accompanied by the addition of natural jasmine blossoms. (I can skip the jasmine green teas – they usually don’t excite me). With Alice, WP has introduced the ultimate in sensory overload for those of us who love the taste of a truly fine tea coupled with the fragrance of jasmine.

Using Golden Snail Black Tea as the base, I didn’t expect to fall in love. I am a fan of oolongs and have never fully appreciated black teas. I have been converted!

When I discovered Whispering Pines, I think Alice had just made its debut as one of his offerings. I ordered an ounce of it along with several other of his great teas and began enjoying each one in sequence until I opened and tried Alice. This batch was apparently limited in the amount crafted and offered – it was already Out of Stock when I jumped online to order more!!! I am on the waiting list for notification once more is available and I will definitely be purchasing much more than my first measly one-ounce supply – I am rationing myself in the hopes of replenishing my stock before it’s totally gone.

Someone on another site mentioned that they also loved Alice but found it to be too expensive for everyday enjoyment – I strongly disagree. Less expensive tea that isn’t all that interesting is VERY costly, especially if you have to force yourself to drink it just to make it go away. I can’t afford a lot of things, but well-crafted, fine quality tea is an affordable luxury, IMHO.

Smells like bergamot, but does not taste much like it. Beautiful tea base. Very good tea, though not earl grey enough for me.

Smooth, complex, easy to drink.

A great solid morning cup. Steeped as directed and it was delicious. Took milk well.

I have had this in my cupboard for a while so presumably what I have is the old version. Still delicious. I drank this a week ago but I need to catch up on my tasting notes.

Well… hello lovely. Currently enjoying steep #2. Delicious, balanced & complex.

There is a smoky, resinous feel to this tea, although it still retains a light feel. It almost makes me think of eucalyptus, but in a really nice way, not a medicinal one. It’s not my absolute favorite from this company, but since most of my all-time faves come from here, that’s not an insult. :)

082/365

I haven’t been drinking a lot of shou recently (or any pu’erh, come to that), but a rainy winter day like today strikes me as the ideal time to be doing so. There’s just something about walking to work across a muddy field and then drinking a tea that tastes earthy and muddy that appeals to my sense of worldly balance.

The first steep is exactly that. Earthy and muddy. It’s not too heavy on those flavours, although I kept the first steep fairly short (around 30 seconds, since I’m brewing western style.) There’s a background mineral note, but not much else just yet.

Second steep is slightly more muted; smoother and creamier. It’s still earthy, but there’s a more prominent sweetness and a light brown sugar flavour.

Third steep is very similar to the second, although with a more pronounced mineral quality in the way of wet rock. It’s marginally less sweet because of that, particularly in the aftertaste. The initial earthiness is diminishing.

Fourth steep is still primarily mineral, although that is also diminishing. The earthiness has all but vanished, along with most of the sweetness. A slight bite is emerging – not enough to call it astringent, but a little drying and catchy in the throat.

Fifth steep is lacking a lot of flavour of the earlier infusions. Up front, it’s primarily a sweet water kind of flavour, but there’s still a bit of a minerally/wet rock vibe towards the end of the sip.

It’s probably not quite over, and I could squeeze a few more resteeps out if I really wanted to, but I’m going to stop here because I’ve been drinking this one all day and I fancy a change. Sometimes I forget how much I love shou, and this has been a brilliant reminder!

I had a delightfully puzzling experience with steeping my Golden Snails sample in a gaiwan. Compared to my Oolong drinking friends I’m almost blind to bitterness or astringency, but I had a hard time preventing this tea from hitting too hard.

Got a tip that could help me tailor my steeping? Take a look at my technique and let me know!

Setup
Water: In house R/O
Kettle: Electric Cusine-art Tea w/ temp control
Gaiwan: 100 ml

Steeping Technique
Tea weight: ~7g
Temp: Tried 190, 200, and Boiling
Time: Flash Steep (pour it in, pour it out asap)

Notes
+1st steep @boiling: Super sweet, but balanced by a flash of green-tea-like astringency and some umami qualities (brothy?) Loved this steeping!

+Steepings 1-8 had a sweetness detectable by the tip of the tongue. Steeping 9 and 10 did not.

+Steepings 2-9 had an intense, lingering combo of black-tea bitterness and green tea astringency that distracted me. Temps 190 and 200 made little difference in fixing the problem.

+Discovery: the practiced sipping technique of a person suffering from too much attention to detail took the spotlight off the bitterness. Aerate enough and coat the tongue from tip to tail and the balance starts to come back.

Edit

Tried 5 grams instead of 7 and this made all the difference in the world. It has a tiny bit of astringency but in perfect balance with the rest of the tea. Got this idea from the TeaDB youtube channel. One of the guys will, instead of lowering temp, drop the leaf to water ratio.

This tea is a complex one. Extremely smooth. The base is excellent. Though honestly I kept waiting for the spearmint and or the cooling sensation to show up and it really never did for me…if there, it is extremely subtle.
Sometimes our taste buds can be off so I do plan to give it another try shortly —so stay tuned.
Everything I have had from Brenden at Whispering Pines has been worthwhile.

Oh man, this is such a blast from the past. I think I finished a one ounce pouch of this tea back around the start of the month, wrote a review in my notebook, and then just sat on it. I didn’t forget about it because it has been in the back of my mind pretty consistently since then, but I just couldn’t bring myself to post it here. I have no clue what it was that was holding me back. Anyway, I think I have previously mentioned how much I love Taiwanese black teas. They just do it for me. This one was very good, near excellent in fact, but I did knock a few points off for a couple reasons. First, I think there are better or at least comparable Sun Moon Lake black teas at similar or slightly lower price points and there was an odd tomato-like scent and taste in the very early goings that was a turn off for me. Not that I don’t like tomato or anything, but I don’t necessarily desire to smell or taste it in my tea.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. I went with a lower water temperature than Whispering Pines recommended (195 F as opposed to 212 F) simply because I am used to brewing teas of this type at temperatures between 194-205 F. I used 6 grams of leaves for 4 ounces of water and flash rinsed rather than going with a more standard 10 second rinse. The first infusion was 5 seconds. The fourteen subsequent infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted fairly powerful aromas of sweet potato, crushed basil, wintergreen, and tomato. Actually, it was more like stewed tomato to be precise. The rinse brought out new aromas of wood, malt, spearmint, and black grape. The first infusion then brought out a stronger spearmint aroma coupled with hints of baked bread. In the mouth, I immediately detected unexpectedly strong notes of basil, wintergreen, and spearmint on the entry. Notes of malt, wood, sweet potato, and baked bread followed. In the background, I caught a faint hint of black grape too. Subsequent infusions brought out new impressions of leather, eucalyptus, anise, plum, apricot, honey, minerals, cocoa, brown sugar, camphor, and of course, stewed tomato. Fortunately, that note (which admittedly kind of clashed with most of the others, lending a rather acidic and unwelcome tang to the tea) faded very quickly. I couldn’t detect much of it after about the fourth or fifth infusion as I recall. The later infusions retained a good deal of complexity on the nose and in the mouth. I could still find lingering impressions of baked bread, malt, brown sugar, minerals, camphor, eucalyptus, spearmint, and wintergreen underscored by fleeting hints of honey and stone fruits without too much difficulty.

To be honest, I enjoyed this tea greatly, but to reiterate what I stated in my introductory paragraph, I just had to take a few points off due to a rough edge or two that bothered me and the tea’s price relative to its overall value. Otherwise I would have rated it higher. Though it may sound like it, I’m not calling this tea overpriced or at least I do not intend to. I have just had Sun Moon Lake black teas and other similar Taiwanese black teas at or slightly below this price point that were smoother overall. To be fair, this is still a very high quality tea and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone with an interest in Taiwanese black teas. There are just a few other teas of this type that I think I prefer over this one.