Whispering Pines Tea Company

Okay, now that I have eaten myself silly, it is time to get back to catching up my reviews. I received this one as a free sample a couple months back. I think it was right around the time this tea went out of stock for the season. Now that I have finished this one, I have finally consumed all of the white tea that I have purchased from Whispering Pines this year. I will be moving on to the blacks and oolongs shortly.

For the purposes of this review, I steeped a rather heaping tablespoon of this tea in 190 F water for 3 minutes. I infused this tea two more times for 5 and 7 minutes respectively. To be completely honest, I had to guess as to how this tea should be prepared as I forgot to log the suggested brewing method and could not find it on Whispering Pines’ new website. I should also note that an absolutely wicked storm hit right as I was preparing the third and final infusion, and with my power going in and out, I had to time it with my phone. It may or may not have been a full seven minutes. I’m pretty sure I got close.

First Infusion: The infused liquor was a rich gold. Aromas of oatmeal, grass, hay, honey, and butter were apparent on the nose. In the mouth, I picked up strong notes of oatmeal and honey underscored by cream, butter, grass, hay, and flowers.

Second Infusion: The infused liquor was again a rich gold. Milder, smoother aromas of oatmeal, grass, hay, honey, and butter were joined by a subtly floral aroma. In the mouth, I picked up notes of honey, butter, grass, oatmeal, and hay balanced by slightly more pronounced notes of flowers and cream. I also detected a very subtle minerality on the fade.

Third Infusion: The infused liquor was a slightly paler gold. I detected mild aromas of oatmeal, honey, cream, and butter. I also detected a slight mineral scent. In the mouth, I detected smooth, refined notes of oatmeal, cream, honey, and butter. The grass and hay notes lingered in the background, but were not nearly as strong. The floral and mineral notes showed back up on the finish and nicely balanced the lingering impressions of oatmeal, honey, and cream.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this tea. I generally like the white teas offered by Whispering Pines, but this one did not leave much of an impression on me. As a matter of fact, I found it very mediocre compared to the other white teas I have tried from Whispering Pines. To me, it just seemed to be lacking the depth and complexity of the others. I will concede, however, that my brewing method may not have done it justice. I really just cannot say with certainty that I got this one right. I think I will go ahead and give this one a middling score in my personal rating system as a mediocre Whispering Pines tea is, in my opinion, still better than many others out there, but I will do so with the caveat that I will be trying this one if and when it is offered again to see if my opinion changes.

Brewed with a Western method, in a ceramic tea pot.

I had to purchase this from reading the ingredients list. I like trying interesting herbal bends, and this blend seemed too irresistible not to purchase. I’ve been drinking down the two ounces since last October.

When I had my first cup, I didn’t know what to make of the taste. The combination of flavors created something very knew to me, and I was confused. I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I’m not good at picking out certain flavors for certain teas, and this one was one of those teas. But the more I drank from my initial ounce, the more it grew on me.

The infusion is purple-brown dark and opaque. It feels thick in the mouth. It tastes fruity and sweet from the elderberries, and like licorice. (I’m not licorice fan, but I also don’t dislike it. For any licorice-haters, you might want to take the chance anyway.) The chicory and marshmallow root contribute a bitterness to counteract the sweetness.

The interactions among each of the ingredients must have been what tripped up my taste buds the first few times I drank this blend. I now consider Elder Grove a permanent addition to my stash. It’s a wonderful winter evening drink. Comforting and warming. A must-try for herbal blends lovers.

Brenden gave me a 5g rolled ball of this to try out (The Spring 2016 harvest, I imagine). And holy cats this is good. It has a very sweet syrupy scent to it mixed in with the malt. Almost like a pancake and syrup breakfast. The taste is just as good. While not quite as sweet as the scent on the nose, it still has that signature malty sweetness. I would venture to say the taste of it is close to a honey than syrup. Still delicious either way. And it lasted a good 6 or 7 infusions with solid flavor while brewing gongfu style. This is what I look for in a black tea.

This is actually a special review for me. I had been in contact with Brenden back and forth recently and we had discussed getting together for tea, being fellow Michigan based tea lovers. This past Sunday, that day came. We met up at a local park and talked and drank tea for a few hours.

This tea was among the teas we took in. Maybe it was the fact that I had the owner of Whispering Pines brewing tea for me while we sat in a park but man… this tea was spot on. Sweet, nutty, clean. Completely delicious.

We ended up getting rained on a bit after finishing this tea. It was pretty awesome. And certainly an honor. So, get this tea. My next order will definitely have this in there.

Thanks again, Brenden. Until next time! Cheers.

Again, I have to say that Steepster has changed my life. Thanks to this wonderful community, I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy 100x what I would have on my own; through recommendations, swaps, stash sales, and even gifts. This was one of those swaps :)

I drank this every morning for an entire week at work and found that it does best to brew bold and less than 4 infusions. Taste somewhat like what I would expect sweet bread made with dianhong with citrus splash ontop. Baked bread more than malt which is just fine, but it was a bit surprising. A warm cup in the morning. The one downside to this is that it doesn’t taste all that great when it is either lukewarm or cold; but I think this is true with all earl’d teas.

I have been holding off on reviewing this tea for some time now. I mainly did this because there were other teas I wanted to review first, but I also wanted to make sure my first impression of this tea was accurate. The first time I tried this, I was floored by how creamy it was. I loved it. I, however, did not want to post a review until the honeymoon period was over. Now that I have spent more time with this tea and tinkered with my brewing methods a bit, I can safely say that my first impression was more or less accurate.

I brewed this tea gongfu style. In order to keep my oolong brewing methods somewhat consistent across reviews, I opted to follow Verdant Tea’s guidelines for brewing oolongs since I have had great success with that method. The only thing I really changed was the water temperature. Following a quick rinse, I steeped approximately 6 grams of tea leaves in 190 F water for 10 seconds. I followed the first infusion with 11 additional infusions, increasing the steep time by two seconds per infusion (10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, and 32 seconds). At a later date, I did two shorter gongfu sessions with this tea. I raised the water temperature to 195 F for the first session and performed 5 total infusions of 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 seconds. The other session was conducted using 190 F water and comprised eight total infusions of 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, and 24 seconds. Note that I will only be referring to the first session in this review.

Prior to infusion the wet leaves presented lovely aromas of cream, butter, custard, sticky rice, and coconut underscored by honey and floral scents. The early infusions emphasized savory, creamy, buttery aromas underscored by traces of honey, flowers, and sweetgrass. In the mouth, I detected robust notes of cream, custard, sticky rice, butter, coconut, and honey balanced by delicate floral notes resembling a blend of honeysuckle, osmanthus, gardenia, orchid, and chrysanthemum. I also detected very subtle vegetal notes. The middle infusions were more balanced with a blend of savory and floral aromas and flavors. In the mouth, the honey, floral, and vegetal notes became more pronounced and more refined. A hint of minerality also began to emerge. The later infusions emphasized a mix of cream, sweetgrass, and leaf lettuce on the nose. The mouth presented a mixture of delicate cream, butter, and faint floral notes underpinning leafy vegetal and fairly sweet grassy notes, as well as minerality.

I really like this oolong, but I simply could not move myself to assign it a numerical score higher than 90. I just cannot see myself reaching for this one all that often. Though the aromas and flavors are lovely, I found this to be something of a heavy tea. It was very filling for me and I’m not sure I really want that out of an oolong, especially a greener one such as this. Still, this is a very nice tea. I would not hesitate to recommend it to any curious drinker.

Savory, smooth, cocoa, peat, bakery, a wisp of smoke and the faintest bit of anise. Medium-rich for a black, full-flavored. A nice cup, would be delighted to find this tea in a restaurant.

Sipdown (143)!

Thank you Scheherazade for the sample!

I drank this one on the commute to work this week, I’d have loved to brew it Gong Fu but I was a little hesitant that the sample wouldn’t be quite enough leaf and my session would be a little week. And, in the end I ended up putting the rest of the sample in the GCTTB because Jillian had asked to try it, and I just had to take advantage of the chance to share a WP tea since everyone wants the chance to get to try them. Usually for good reason.

You’ll have to forgive my lazyness; I’ve built up a queue of posts this week and I’m feeling too tired to reword all of the jot notes into paragraphs, so these next few notes will likely just be copy and pasted jot notes for convenience/speed.

- Brisk/Astringent at first
- More of a round/clean flavour as it cooled
- Malt/Raisin/Honey top notes
- With some woody, cinnamon, and nut body notes
- Little bit of a sweeter marzipan finish?

Sipdown. Keep in mind that I don’t have a well-developed palate for unflavored black teas, but to me this just seemed like a weaker version of Jabberwocky. It was still pleasant and I enjoyed the sample, but if I was purchasing again, I’d definitely go for the Jabberwocky.

I tried cold brewing this, which was a mistake. I was like ‘what could go wrong?’ Most other green oolongs are great cold-brewed. Buttery and tannic and awful. At least there was some flavor versus the hot brew. Not good flavor, but flavor.
Ended up pouring it out.

I really don’t get this one. Tried this both westren and gaiwan and I haven’t been able to get much out of it. Dry leaf smells sweet and floral and hay. Mouthfeel is thick and creamy, but it doesn’t have any taste.
190F, 180F, long steeps, short steeps. I can’t seem to find the right brewing conditions. Very confused by this tea.

Well, it’s the weekend at last! I must admit that it was a LONG week dealing with cranky kids. However, Summer Camp is going pretty smoothly, despite the small mishaps that happen with moody children.

Anyway, I wanted a tasty cup of tea (I must admit that I’ve been drinking coffee all week in the mornings). Ugh, I know. The ‘Art of Darkness’ from Whispering Pines was poking itself from the top of the cupboard. Therefore, I made a batch of it in my gaiwan.

Yum. There are so many chocolate/cocoa notes. Nice smooth dark chocolate flavors. Pretty sweet on its own. I’m thinking about buying more of this sometime before the summer’s over. It’d be a great winter/fall tea.

I get mainly orange blossom honey from this tea. Not too much in the way of sweet potato, malt, chocolate or spice.

Verryy citrusy actually! Almost as if it were blended with an essential oil, even though it’s really just pure tea. I can see why it is the base for their Wild Grey blend, where bergamot oil is actually combined with the Dian Hong.

It’s not my favourite but if you love a citrus note without actual added citrus, you’ll love this tea.

Bought a tong of this recently and drank it today. This is an excellent Shou with I think a lot of potential. Right off the bat I got notes of bittersweet dark chocolate. Over twelve steeps this changed into a nice sweet note. I would say it became a fruity tea but I really can’t pin it down as to what fruit. I had drank the from the Puerh Tea TTB a couple of rounds ago and liked it then. This tea has a little more age on it than that one did and I think it has improved a bit. I think this tea will just get better with age. I put this through twelve steeps but it would definitely have gone a few more. It was somewhat weaker in the twelfth steep but not so much that I couldn’t get more out of the leaves.

I steeped this twelve times in a 150ml gaiwan with 10.3g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min.

Puerh Tea TTB. This is a nice shou. But I think it is not as good as his 2012 Huron Gold Needle. It is good though. There was a little bitterness at first and there was a fair amount of fermentation flavor. This was not an unpleasant fermentation taste though. It was dark and rich in the early infusions. I’d say it had some notes of chocolate in there. I wouldn’t say it developed a fruity taste. It did get fairly sweet after the bitterness was history. The bitterness lasted only about two steeps. This is a fairly long lasting shou. I gave it fourteen steeps and it was not quite done. I could have gotten somewhere between two more and maybe four more steeps out of it. But fourteen steeps in a 120ml gaiwan is a lot of tea.

I steeped this fourteen times in a 120ml gaiwan with 9g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec,10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, 2 min, 2.5 min, and 3 min. This is one I will have to look into buying eventually. It is my guess that he has a lot of these to sell. I think he really invests in his shou cakes.

I thought I wrote a note on this a while ago. What I was going to say was that this was a clean black tea with a very light berry sweetness, a pine woodsy aged quality, and a calm qi. All thanks to Whiteantlers. Anyway.

First steep Gong Fu with a generous portion of close to 4 grams. 190 F.

15 Seconds

Clear air, pines, and berries in the meadow. Smooth overall, and fairly light and sweet. There was a bit of a malty body, but a body closer to what tea noters call caramel. But a VERY LIGHT caramel. That is something that can be discussed…Oddly enough, it tasted similar to a Yunnan Moonlight, or a thicker body white tea. Interesting.

20 seconds.

Much of the same thing as previous, but more of the allusive cocoa note this time. Good tea. Good, good, good tea.

30 seconds.

Fuller body and smoother. More Yunnan sweet potato, but on a much lighter note. There’s a lot less tension in my shoulders. Interesting.

More later…

And more later. The last two steeps were fairly simple and plain. Good Yunnan black tea with the qualities of a Yunnan moonlight. I thank Whiteantlers for this gift. I would not pay the thirteen dollars for this personally, but I do think that this is an excellent black tea that is well worth a try.

Wow. This tea is just wow. There’s just so much going on here I wish I wasn’t in such a rush to finish it off so I can get to work. Opens with very strong sweet potato notes followed by dark chocolate and caramel (actually very similar to some salted caramel truffles I made last week). Next there’s cantaloupe and white grapes and a faint hint of multi-grain bread and oats. This is quite possibly one of the first teas I’d be interested in re-steeping — perhaps next time if I’m in less of a rush.

Just as good as last time. Still a distinct honeyed oat flavour, which was this time accompanied by a light fruity flavour (strawberry and peach). Lovely.

I should really explore white teas more, as I tend to really enjoy them.

This one was a nice, light pre-dinner/post-work cup. Oats are definitely the dominant flavour with a honey sweetness that makes it very similar to an oat bar. Light, velvety floral (violets or similar) notes towards the middle/end.

This was good, but I’m finding it difficult to describe. There WERE lots of different flavor notes, but they were all quite subtle and melded together and I can’t really but my finger on what they were, except I could identify a sort of eucalyptus note. So I would say this is advanced level tea, whereas I am still at intermediate level (at best). Also was never convinced I was preparing it properly since I only have a small gravity steeper, none of the gongfu equipment that was recommended.

Sipdown.

I brewed this many times over the course of sigh 48 hours. It was the very last of the package and I just can’t afford to rebuy it.

Very sad. And slightly regretful that I chucked out the leaves, even at that point. Like maybe I could have given them one last shot as a cold brew?

The hunt continues for an affordable fruity DHP.