Whispering Pines Tea Company

amazing tea! I am enjoying a cup of this while watching the Olympics. Went for a long hike with my dogs this morning, snow coming this evening, life is great!

I was excited to get some of this tea, between all the glowing reviews here and on Youtube, I figured it must be incredible. I must say, the hype is true, it is wonderful tea. Each steeping seems a bit different which adds to the excitement. I enjoyed each subsequent steeping tasting and smelling different things. Overall, I think the most prevalent scent and taste was of baked bread. Maybe the fact that I am gluten free added to the appeal of this tea? Overall, delicious. I will guard my supply of this tea :).

Savoring this lovely tea this morning and now pondering the need to get some Golden Earl from Brenden.

Wow…so smooth. A beautiful rich tasting tea. I even loved the feel of this tea. If you have not ordered from Brenden yet you are missing out! I steeped 2 x according to directions on the label.

The cocoa-y, chocolate fudge notes are all there, strong and delightful. A bit of creamy vanilla, too. I can detect the cherry, but only if I really focus – maybe I’m willing the flavor into existence. Handed the cup to the husband for him to sip, only telling him, “It’s Cocoa Amore.” He gets the cherry flavor immediately. I’m jealous.

It brews up quite light in color, although the leaves are deliciously super dark and promising. Still, it packs a lot of flavor, regardless of the color of the liquor. Great tea, as expected, but I still love Golden Orchid more. I’m impressed, though, at the richness and complexity of this tea.

Oh my, such a good cup of tea!

Loved the taste of this tea, smooth and delicious.

I was excited to try this tea, while it tasted good, it did not live up to the hype around it. I liked it, didn’t love it.

I think I had this one on Monday? I remember I drank it Western style during a meeting, so my memory on it is just a little bit fuzzy – however it was very delicious and I remember taking that first sip and kind of being like “Whoa, that is very robust”. Woody/spicy and thick leather and malt notes – but one of the other flavour descriptions that’s popping into my head right now as I think about it is roasted peanuts dipped in dark chocolate. Mmm!

Another tea from last weekend…

This is a really nice black tea; and I think brewing it Gong Fu brings out the flavour notes in the most wonderful way. I believe I steeped this one around a dozen times last weekend, but of course I did the thing where I didn’t take notes so I’m relying a little bit on my instagram post to help jog my memory a bit.

Notes of milk chocolate, barley, roasted peanuts, and French bread dominated the session; so all very rich, dense and full bodied flavour notes. With perhaps a sort of “Patisserie” theme to the composition of the taste? However, also some leather undertones in mid session infusions – in a pleasant way.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BtrdG1glc9W/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob2uHIiW3II&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ&index=54

I sort of hesitate to say this/make the comparison, but…

I recently had a cup of this late at night (while apartment hunting, of course) and it tasted pretty much exactly like Laoshan Chocolate Genmaicha. Sweet, malty, chocolate, roasty, brown rice notes. Like, a dead ringer for it.

Morning cup of tea, with milk.

I just wanted a really nice, strong black tea to start my day with. This was a nice pick because it is really distinct and robust, but it has a beautiful array of nuanced flaovur notes to it even after adding in milk. Notes of brown rice, malt, barley, cocoa, whole wheat bread, and nuts that just make me feel deeply comforted but also just a little bit like I’m sitting out on the porch of some little farm hour out in the middle of the prairies, with like crops of barley growing around me.

And grain elevators, and shit like that. Anyway, it’s nice is the point.

Morning cuppa, with some gingerbread cookies.

This was a nice enough Dian Hong, but I feel like I’ve had so many REALLY good Dian Hongs this year that I just didn’t have the same degree of appreciation for it as I’ve had for some of those other ones. I will say though, that it had quite a lot of sweet potato flavour to it, and that’s a quality I really love in a good black tea – Hong or otherwise. So I have to give it props for that, at least! Other than that, just some good overall sweetness; a mix of creamed honey notes and brown sugar, some mineral, and a bit of a twiggy kind of quality? Also some malt.

And yes – twiggy over woody. I know that those are kind of the same things, but I feel like there’s a different connotation attached to either. Woody, for me at least, kind of speaks to a more well rounded, “thick” kind of quality and twiggy, in my mind, is something a little more “springy”/with a bit more liveliness to it? I don’t know – in my head there’s a difference.

This also worked nicely with the gingerbread; sweet and spicy. A good tea for cookie dunking…

This was my first sipdown of the week. At some point over the course of the year, I acquired a pouch of this tea. I’m not certain whether it was from 2016 or 2017, though if I had to guess, I would say the former. I did not quite know what to expect when I cracked this one open. I had seen multiple reviews online, and despite the general reception being mostly positive, it got more mixed reviews overall than I would normally expect from a Whispering Pines offering. Personally, I found this to be an excellent hong cha.

Before I provide my usual rundown of my brewing method, allow me to state that I deviated a little from Whispering Pines’ brewing instructions. The brewing instructions on the pouch recommended a water temperature of 212 F, but that seemed a little high to me. I am used to using temperatures between 194-205 F for many tippy Yunnan black teas, and once I saw the profusion of golden tips, I knew I would not be using the recommended water temperature. I’ve had a lot of luck lately with using 194 F water for Yunnan black teas, so that is what I went with here. The rinse was only a couple seconds. I more or less did it water on, water off. I stuck with my usual 6 grams of loose tea in a 4 ounce gaiwan. Infusions ran as follows: 5 seconds, 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, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea emitted pronounced aromas of baked bread, sweet potato, and molasses. After the rinse, I found new aromas of vanilla, malt, and brown sugar. The first proper infusion brought out a touch of woodiness on the nose. On the palate, I found light notes of baked bread, malt, brown sugar, sweet potato, and molasses. Subsequent infusions brought out impressions of cream, cocoa, clove, anise, wood, caramel, fennel, orange, honey, minerals, and eucalyptus. The later infusions offered lingering impressions of minerals, brown sugar, sweet potato, malt, and wood chased by gentle, cooling herbal notes on the finish.

In my opinion, this was yet another really nice Yunnan black tea from Whispering Pines Tea Company. I particularly liked the little herbal notes it offered and was extremely impressed by both its smooth body and respectable staying power. Overall, I would have no issue recommending this tea to fans of traditional Yunnan black teas.

Haven’t been posting much lately. All of the down time Steepster has been having has made me a bit paranoid that all of my data will one day go poof. So I made my own system and I’m cross posting to Steepster.

Since my new system is using a 10pt rating system, I’m adjusting this rating to match the new definitions.

Got a sample of this in a recent order and gave it a try yesterday.

This time I did not taste any anise, but it really was a nothing special black tea without anything of note. Adjusting rating for the new system.

Not a flavor I’m wild for. Almost anise like, but mild

I have tried this and it was unforgettable. Loved it smell and mixture.