Whispering Pines Tea Company

This tea is gorgeous! Smells sweet and fudgy and tastes like chocolate milk! I didn’t taste a lot of vanilla, mostly got a chocolate milk with a hint of chocolate chip banana bread? Anyways, it lives up to its hype! After reading some comments, I’ve realized that the vanilla may have drifted to the bottom. I will shake the bag up a bit and try again.

I’m trying this one cold brewed today. Initial impressions were of a smooth, malty tea with an underlying earthy or woodiness. As I sip it and slurp it a little, the fruity notes come out – I can actually taste the roasted plum and longan fruit notes that Brenden describes. This is very tasty as a cold brew, but I wouldn’t want to just gulp it as a refreshing cold beverage – even cold, it deserves to be savoured. :)

Mmmm, tasty. Smooth malt, bread, cooked fruit, and a bit of honey sweetness. Flavours linger on the palate. Very nice!

This was my first tea of the morning. I don’t think I was fully awake yet, so I didn’t pay super close attention, but I remember it being delicious. :)

My Whispering Pines order came!! First up for review is the Jabberwocky. It smells like plums and roses. It tastes like a toasted sourdough baguette covered in honey. The aftertaste is crisp and fresh. It seems to gain in sweetness as it cools. Overall, this tea is fabulous! I’m so excited to try the others!

I cut back on the leaf this time, and the tea magically lost its darkness and instead came out with a beautiful, slightly burnt caramel flavor. Absolutely unique!

This has been one of those never-ending weeks where problems arise faster than I can fix them. I haven’t been able to turn off my mind for a moment in days. I opted to go for this tea instead of a more calming one in the hope that its strength would force my mind to pay attention to it.

I’m re-brewing and bottling up this technique – perhaps it will get me through the rest of the day, as well…

This tea reminds me of coffee – not so much in the flavor, but in the thickness. Sometimes tea can be thin tasting, pleasant, but tasting more of water than of much else. This tea has serious weight and body, and could definitely serve as a morning pick-me-up in the place of strong coffee.

Some teas build up in your mouth, and you only feel like you get to know them by the end of the cup. Somehow, this tea feels like it front-ended everything. The first sip contained an incredible amount of flavor – but I forgot what it tasted like before the last sip.

Some of these well-loved teas get the most imaginative flavor descriptions in tasting notes. People taste orange, plum, blackberries – never just fruit. They taste particular loafs of bread and specific vintages of honey. I just love reading through them. My palate is not so finely tuned.
What I’m noticing most here is that this is a very “breathy” tea. After I take a sip, I can sit, breathing in and out for a few minutes, and I re-taste the tea on every breath out. The breathing is almost more pleasant than the actual drinking of the tea. Overall, the tea affects every portion of my mouth. Whether while drinking, or on the breath out, the flavor hits everything – my gums, all of my tongue, the roof of my mouth. My teeth? That is perhaps stretching the point… but my teeth do taste rather like this tea as I tongue them.

Yooyoyoyoyyoyoy this tea is fucking bananassssss

I received this tea packet around my Birthday last month and saved it for a special occasion.

I prepared the tea in my Gaiwan.
Rinsed the leaves quickly two times.

The perfume from the wet leaves was one of those rare experiences.
Powdery, sweet, very floral…carnation and orchid with honeysuckle
but not funeral flowers…not nauseating floral overload.

This was the best floral scent in the World! Love and life smells like this! It was breathtaking! If you were walking on the outskirts of heaven barefoot, the scent that would rise up would be this scent…I’m certain.

I took a sip of tea and the aroma was so wrapped up in the flavor that they were the same. Floral, incense, sweet and smooth with a little buttery mouth-feel.

No astringency, no dryness. No acidity or vegital flavor.
NICE!

Incredible Tea! Hot, warm, cold…the same. Gorgeous.

Thank you for this tea which has made this 40th Birthday celebration of my daughter Annalisa even more memorable.

Here’s a picture I took on the way home today of some Snow Geese on the frozen part of a small lake in Central Park. THOUSANDS come through here every year!!!

My initial impressions of this tea is in the aroma. The smell of the whole leaves smells a lot like sweets, and smell very sweet. After steeping, the dry leaves and the tea liquor smelled a lot like the packages I get for my vitamin C. It smelled a lot like fruit. Exotic fruits.

First Pu-erh i have tried. Smooth to drink. Nutty flavor. Not bad considering i usually do not like black teas. A solid 85.

One of the best black teas I have had but the shipping was very slow. Will order again soon when I return home though.

Holy sweet mother of dragons this is delicious!

SUCH a rich, thick, silky smooth mouth feel. So chocolatey. Yum.

So creamy! Can I have this tea instead of whipped cream on a cake? Thinking about it, Golden Orchid is a potentially awesome Valentines day tea – lots of creamy and sweet notes. There are toasted asian milk bread, chocolate and malt too! Very smooth and thick texture, with some dryness 3 infusions later. Yep, this tea can resteep very well and keep the vanilla flavor – huge edge over other tea blends!

Full review at Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/whispering-pines-teas-golden-orchid-tea-tea-review/

I like this tea. I don’t really get the fruity or chocolate flavors that other people do, but I do like the maltiness of it. It has a more complex flavor than other black teas, so it stands well on its own where others would need flavors added.

Out of the package, this tea smells like straight up dark brown sugar. I do get a whiff of woodsy smells on the dry leaf, slight earth, cedar, and dampness.

The resulting brew is incredibly sweet. It tastes like maple candy. There is some lingering flavors of some cocoa and wet wood. The lingering scent of the candy cap mushrooms is definitely floating on top. The mushies mix well with the base black teas. They look beautiful in my white porcelain gaiwan. Today, this tea did not quit, I think I got a record number of steeps from a WP black today! I might have gone on longer, but I had to go to work :P
I am so glad that I got all of WP’s mushroom teas! Who would’ve thunk that Brendan would make already good tea great?

Overboard TTB #15

I was so excited when I saw the sample of this in the TTB! I haven’t tried a lot from Whispering Pines yet, but I love Golden Snail and a chai with that base definitely sounded like a winner to me. And it is! Smooth and malty with the perfect balance of spicy and sweet and just a hint of vanilla in the aftertaste. I enjoyed it both plain and with milk this morning and will be savoring the remainder of the sample (and probably re-ordering at some point once it’s gone.)