Whispering Pines Tea Company

This tea is absolutely incredible, as is every other tea that I have had from Whispering Pines Tea Co.(Golden Orchid, North Winds, and Ailaoshan). I used the recommended tea brewing instructions( 1 Tablespoon, 190degree water, 2minutes) and the first thing that I noticed was the very intoxicating, sweet, caramel, toasted coconut smell. The toasted coconut note really comes out for in the smell of the tea which is the best way to describe the teas smell in my opinion. After all of that smelling my mouth was watering and yearning to taste the sweet nectar from this tea, I knew it was going to be amazing. On the first sip I immediately noticed a very very sweet taste which I have never before noticed in an oolong, much different than the sweetness from leaf hopper bitten oolongs that I know and love. This better, and a lot more intense, imagine a fruit crossed with a flower if that makes sense and you are left with a not overly strong sweet taste. Its very hard to explainable. As soon as the tea hits the tongue it can be described as very floral but then you are hit with the sweetness and once swallowed the taste of the teas sweetness lingers, leaving you wanting another sip of the tea. As of right now this is the best oolong(possibly the best tea in general) that I have ever had. It is an experience that everyone needs to try. Also to let everyone know Whispering Pines Teas are completely handcrafted by one person and the quality of everything that Brenden makes is incomparable to anything else I have tried(Verdant, Butiki, Wild Monk, many NATC winners, and numerous others) Nothing has been better than anything by Whispering Pines Tea Co.

What delicious wizardry is this?!

Thank you so much to beelicious for the generous sample of this tea!

I’ve been curious to try something from Whispering Pines ever since I joined Steepster and started reading all of the rave reviews. I even visited the website a few times, but I could never quite bring myself to order. I’m the kind of person who clips coupons and buys most of my wardrobe at thrift stores, after all…could this tea really be amazing enough to justify the high price tag?

Apparently, yes! Setting aside how adorable the dry leaf is, this is quite possibly the best straight black tea I’ve ever tasted. It is incredibly rich and full-bodied with a dense, malty flavor that’s delicious all by itself but I’m sure would also be amazing with milk. It has just a hint of sweetness to it and no bitterness or astringency at all that I noticed. And, on top of all that, it re-steeps beautifully with almost no reduction in flavor. I brewed this Western-style and got SEVEN delicious infusions before I was ready to move on (and I probably could have done more if I wasn’t anxious to try a different tea.)

Next time Whispering Pines has a sale, I think I’m going to have to break down and place an order…

Dry leaf smells like raisins and maple candy
Wet leaf smells a bit smoky, which I did not expect. There’s also an interesting apricoty scent if I stuff my nose in the gaiwan for a big huff.

I’ve been interested in this one for awhile, and it didn’t disappoint. It feels very soft when sipped. Kind of hard to describe. It’s definitely better on short steeps, IMO.

Next time, I will try it with some maple syrup in there because it seems like it would fit.

If you want to make your house smell amazing, as well as drink great tea, just leave the bag of dried leaves and shrooms open. My whole nook smells like candy. CANDY NOOK!

Packaging for this tea is great looking. Smooth Taste, not overly earthy as with some Pu-erh’s. The tea opened up to a very balanced flavor after a few steepings. Definitely look forward to continuing to steep this tea.

Bought this as part of my most recent WP order… it was one I just added on a whim because I wasn’t sure if Keemun was my thing. I’ve had some before that was a bit too smoky for my personal tastes.

The Hobbit in me made sure I ordered it to try, despite my initial reservations.

Am I the owner of a very refined pallet? No, I am not. However, I really enjoyed this tea. I could tell upon first sniff that it was going to be one of those juicy sort of fruity black teas, and I was totally right.

I enjoyed this as my “Second Breakfast” today, it was very satisfying. I had coffee first thing in the morning, and I had brought this to work to make sure I could try it asap. I wasn’t disappointed. It had bready notes and a slight maltiness to compliment all the juicy mouth watering flavor.

I wouldn’t call it a chocolatey tea, personally, but that’s ok by me, because I wouldn’t want a chocolatey tea for breakfast anyway.

Not regretting my inner Hobbit’s decision to order this tea :)

I was saving this for when I’m actually sick, but… couldn’t wait, apparently. :) I was craving something with ginger, because my stomach is a bit off. And I just found out the nurse I had as a roommate last week did in fact have influenza, so I figure my immune system can use all the help it can get! The dry tisane is colourful and cool-looking, with the all the elderberries and safflower petals. Brewed it smells… kind of medicinal, but not in an artificial way. The flavour is actually really nice – lots of flavour ane warmth from the ginger, which I was hoping for, but also some sweetness and acidity from the berries, and just a hint of eucalyptus in the aroma. I’m planning to try for another infusion, and add honey to that one, though it’s perfectly pleasant to drink with nothing added. And it’s probably placebo effect, but my stomach feels better already. :)

Update: yeah, it’s really yummy with a generous spoonful of honey added. :)

I was going to review this tea a few days ago but never got around to it. Today, though I have time to sit down and think about what I need to say about this tea. If you are in a hurry and do not wish to read on, here is the abridged version; this tea is a marvel.

I opened the packaged and stuck my gigantic nose in; cherries, chocolate and vanilla strike me as the most dominant scents. I first brewed it according to the instructions provided, but then decided that this needed to be enjoyed gong-fu style. This way you really do get to appreciate the fine quality of this tea. Each subsequent infusion provides your palette with a new experience. It’s a taste teeter-totter where the cherry and the chocolate compete for first and second place on your tongue. The first few infusions you get chocolate, nice decadent dark chocolate, and then cherry. But as you get into the second, third and fourth infusion the cherry starts to dominate. I am starting to think that the cherry flavour is actually from the Tahitian vanilla beans. Though this tea has now informed my brain what flavour I was tasting in the wild mountain black. It was cherry! Anyway Brendan has really, really shown himself to be an adept tea blender. Picking very good ingredients, and then blending these guilefully in such a way to produce such complexity of flavour. It’s a wonderful thing. And something we aspire towards. Though on the flip side, it’s really hard to fuck things up when your ingredients are epic to begin with. So I don’t know if I’m impressed by the ability to source ingredients, to blend, or to conceptualize then implement.

The only down side to this tea is that it is expensive. But like a fine single malt scotch, teas such as these should be savoured. I know as well as anyone how expensive some of these teas can get. Not to mention that vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world, with Tahitian vanilla being some of the more expensive varieties. I don’t think this tea can be achieved at a lower cost though. It would be difficult. But with amount of infusions you can get from this tea, and the enjoyment one receives from consuming such a work, it’s worth it!

Today our order from Whispering pine arrived. So we stopped everything we were doing because we just had to try those teas immediately. We originally discovered this company when we came up with what we at the time thought was the original idea of chopping vanilla beans into chocolatey flavoured Chinese black tea. We wanted to see if anyone else had done this. How naive we were. Anyway, as soon as I open the bag I’m struck by the sweet sweet smell of milk chocolate. Delicious, delicious chocolate. The scent of chocolate is very strong, and the vanilla is very heady. You can really tell that WP has used very good quality materials to build this tea. I followed the instructions stamped upon the front of the package. The smell was strongly chocolate, the taste was chocolate and vanilla. This tea does not disappoint at all. It has lived up to its hype. Cocoa amore is even better. I’ll review that one tomorrow. But this tea, I’m currently drinking gong-fu style, is good for multiple infusions, with little degradation in the flavour.

This was a yummy treat! It definitely has rich chocolate flavor without being sweet or cloying. To my palate, it was not overly complex, but it was still delicious and I will enjoy it immensely.

Sipdown (133)!

Happy to have this one out of my cupboard.

Finished this one off iced which was definitely not the best style of preparation for my personal tastes because it brought out both the natural smoke notes of the tea and, more importantly, a lot of raisin-notes.

I wont be repurchasing this one; I’m 100% sure on that. However that’s just because I’ve learned, through this tea and others, that I’m just not a big lover of Keemun in general. I do think this is probably the best I’ve tried so far though; and I did find at least one prep method that produced a really good brew for me; cold brewing! But why stock something you’re not a big fan of?

New tattoo has started the itchy phase of healing…

Someone shoot me; this is gonna be a bitch. In an attempt to keep from scratching at my very itchy leg I’m drinking tea while scratching pretty well everything else I can. It’s sort of working. Kind of. Maybe not so much…

I’m nearly done this; this’ll be my penultimate cup of it. I made it with a little bit of milk and hot and I’m actually finding it quite nice. For whatever reason the raisin notes I normally dislike aren’t that apparent and the creamyness of the milk with the natural malt and smokey notes of the keemun are really pleasant. The finish reminds me of a darker rye. Delicious!

Even better than this being my second last cup, I was finally able to move the last little bit into a sample bag and clean the tin out to put something else in it! I’ve got so many weird assorted bags of black tea in my cupboard right now that I want to move into tins, and I finally got to kind of do that! One step closer to a more organized cupboard.

I cold brewed this one for work today. Like I’ve mentioned it’s been a bit of a drizzly, dreary day with lots of rain and for whatever reason that made this so, so much better; in general I think it makes all cups of tea just a bit better. And in all honesty, I’m not even entirely sure of what the tea tasted like; I think like cocoa, raisin, and maybe a bit of smoke? I totally wasn’t paying attention to the flavour – I was just really, really enjoying the way I felt while drinking it and the atmosphere around me.

If you haven’t clued in, I really really love the rain. My favourite smell out of all smells is petrichor (the smell of the earth after it rains) and there’s something immensely pleasant and comforting about the sound of rain hitting the ground. It makes me feel so insanely at home and at ease. I wish I could drink all my tea during a heavy rainfall…

Non tea related, I got a haircut!

The last time I had a haircut was just shy of two years ago; and I had it cut down to a few inches long. In those two years it’s grown to roughly boob length? It’s been driving me crazy for a weeks and weeks though; I kept finding hairs in really weird spots and I was going through more shampoo/conditioner than I ever have before. I just HATED it…

So, I shaved it all off tonight. Literally, all of it. My head is so shaved down now that I just feel skin. Basically I took a pair of scissors and cut it down to about a few choppy, uneven inches long and then I had Tre buzz it all down with his razor/clipper. At one point my landlord walked downstairs to use the laundry room, saw this mid shave and just halted mid stride with a look of terror/panic on his face. After it was all buzzed I just took a razor and some shaving cream and got it as clean and close to the scalp as I could. It definitely looks and feels really different. Makes me look like a total bad ass. I can’t wait to accessorize with giant earrings.

My coworkers are gonna flip tomorrow though.

Cold Brew!

I cold brewed this one 100% to burn through the leaf quicker, because I thought I’d done enough experimentation to know pretty definitively that Keemun in general is not for me. Nothing against this tea in particular though.

But actually, I thought that this cold brew was an overwhelming improvement upon the hot version of this one; it’s like raisin infused rye bread and still has the smokey aspects that it did hot. Overall, it’s also a lot sweeter. I don’t know why this works so much better for me cold than it did hot though; it’s essentially just a redistribution of the same flavor notes. It was a nice discovery though! Now when I make this one cold brewed it’ll be 50% to burn through leaf faster and 50% for the taste.

This is the tea that I’m currently drinking, so I’m definitely posting out of order right now. But, I feel like I’m making some very good observations right now with this blend so I think it’s important I write my note now and not later when I’ve forgotten them!

Firstly; let me just start by saying that I think this is a perfectly good tea and I can see why a lot of people love it. I just think that, for a couple reasons, it might not be a perfectly good tea for me!

Sipping on it, the first thing I noticed was a very lovely and rich cocoa flavour. This aspect of the tea I’m greatly enjoying! However, this quickly transitioned into some really, really intense raisin-y notes. I am not a fan of raisins and I am perhaps maybe a little harsher/more critical of teas with raisin flavours in them because of this. However, ultimately it’s not the raisin I’m picking up in this blend that’s overall leaving me feeling a little out of step with the tea.

The more I sip on this the more I’m observing a sharp tangy or sour fruit note and a very powerful yeasty bread flavour that is increasingly reminding me of rye bread. I do like rye bread; there’s a pleasant sourness to it that I find appealing, and it’s interesting that this tea is conveying that – but overall with the flavour there’s a very displaced and disjointed feeling to those notes and it’s hard to feel at ease sipping on this one.

Perhaps it’s a little bit of an acquired taste/flavour? I have more of this so I will certainly be playing around with how to prepare this one to see if I can produce a better cup.

But again, reiterating that there’s nothing wrong with the tea itself; it’s just simply not to my own tastes! I still understand why it’s popular and can appreciate the interesting notes that are present.

This tea was absolutely delicious! The dry leaves smell of chocolate and licorice, and the infusion is strong and dark. It’s a strong, earthy tea taste, with an aftertaste of chocolate. It’s deep and layered, like a forest floor, and wonderful!

Hm. I am not as in love with this one as everyone else seems to be. When I slurped it, there was a scent of smoke though not the taste. I get a creamy feel overall, but this isn’t my kind of vanilla. It certainly smells strongly of vanilla and the taste is there, though not as strong as the scent. It’s a pleasant enough cup but it doesn’t send me over the moon. Thanks for sharing, Ost!

Guess what??? I got a little whiff of smell!! It turns out that a month after surgery, about the time my sense of smell should have kicked in, I got a sinus infection. Since June 1 I’ve been on two different antibiotics, and the doc just prescribed a second round of the last one. This infection, like a lot of sinus infections, is darned stubborn and doesn’t want to die. This antibiotic is very, very powerful. Naturally, I got a yeast infection. :(

But I’ll take it, if it comes with a return of a sense of smell. It’s not all that strong. Yet. Hopefully it will get clearer in time. Last night I could smell and taste DAVID’s Cold 911 just fine. This morning I made a cup of this and couldn’t really smell or taste it. But I have hope! I’ll hoard the last tablespoon of this tea in hopes of being able to tase and smell it soon.

It’s Easter! I get to ignore the stacks of books piled precariously on the floor, waiting to be organized and put into their bookcases. It’s cold too, so I deserve a delicious, warming tea!

I really love this one. I don’t have very much of it left, so I want to save the rest for after surgery. Without a sense of smell or taste, this tea is smooth, mellow, and slightly sweet. Really a delicious cup. But I’m hoping hard that my sense of smell will be restored at least temporarily so I can taste all my favorite teas, including this one.

I am not looking forward to surgery. It is painful, expensive, and not a cure for nasal polyps. But in the years since my last (fourth) surgery, some new treatments have been developed that may delay the return of polyps. The ENT will be implanting a device that should keep the openings to the sinuses open, so less debris will be trapped in the sinuses and cause infections. Fingers crossed.

That was probably more than you wanted to know! So, to recap, this is a delicious tea!

A friend came over to help me pack my books. (All 1785 of them) Took us nearly three hours. On our break, I brewed a pot of this. She is one of those people who really prefers bagged tea from Bigelow, so this one didn’t impress her much. I am always flabbergasted when people don’t enjoy a high quality tea, but I guess it just depends on the person.

Anyway, it is certainly a favorite for me. And now it is time to say good night. Another long day at the day job, then more packing. Charge!!

I need a comfort tea!!! Yesterday we had our first real snowfall of the year and my car got stuck in the parking lot. I had to shovel my way out, and after I finally got settled back home I noticed my right shoulder was sore. I thought I was just out of shape and went on with my day. This morning it hurt quite a bit when I got up. I must have slept on it wrong. But as the day went on, it hurt more and more. The skin was warm and tender to the touch. I couldn’t tell if it was swollen or not. I called my doctor and was able to get in this afternoon to see her. (Gotta love it when that happens!) Turns out I might have torn my rotator cuff. When she said that I imagined a gaping 6 inch tear. But apparently it is a millimeter or less. She gave me a sling and a fancy gel ice pack and told me to take Tylenol for pain. I’m allergic to naproxin, aspirin and ibuprofen, which is a shame, because they do a better job at reducing swelling. So I’m drinking this tea because it’s a comfort. I’m feeling very sorry for myself tonight. Even knitting hurts. Sometiems life just isn’t fair, is it. Luckily,this tea is delicious.

I have had an utterly frustrating day! Chewed out by my boss (I made a mistake, and I deserved it, but didn’t do a lot for my mood, yeah?) Printer failed, so I actually went out and bought a new one. Unfortunately I forgot to buy a USB cable. Back to the store for that. Tried and TRIED to set it up for my wireless network, but …. No dice.
At least with the USB cable I can print from 1 computer. My entire evening was spent on that, and now I have nothing I was going to do done. I am so snarly that I can’t possibly sleep. Again. Someday, as God is my witness, I am going to go to bed and get more than 5 hours of sleep!!!

Rant over. The point of all that was to say that I deserve a treat. I’m drinking a cup of this. Now I am backing slowly away from the computer. If I make a sudden move I might kick the d@mn thing. Good night.

Decided to take this with me to a meeting tonight. Forgot to ditch the leaves after it brewed. They stayed in my travel mug for nearly THREE HOURS. Tea still tasted good. A little over-steeped, perhaps, but very drinkable. Just slightly bitter.

That cheap travel mug actually kept the tea burning hot the whole time.

Ack!!! I put this to steep and then my phone rang. 8 minutes later I remembered my tea. I was horrified! That beautiful tea, over-steeped and probably bitter! I tend to prefer weaker, milder tea because I can’t bear even a hint of bitterness, so I steep at the shorter end of the scale.

But no! The taste is stronger, but not bitter. Still enjoyable even at an 8 minute first steep. I think I enjoy this tea more with every cup.