Whispering Pines Tea Company

Picked this out this morning. I am getting the cocoa, burnt sugar, and even detect (I think) the grapes notes. This is an excellent tea. There is also a lot of malt in this tea. Luckily it is not tasting too malty for me this morning. This is a tea I might eventually buy more of but am undecided.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 3 tsp leaf and boiling water for 3 min.

This tea is good but very malty. I taste a variety of complex notes including malt, burnt sugar, cocoa, and caramel. I am afraid I don’t notice the whole list. It is very good but a little too malty for my taste. By malt I don’t mean chocolate malt.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with boiling water and 3 tsp leaf for 3 min.

And the Whispering Pines black-tea-a-thon continues on. I love Fujian black teas, so I am excited to try this one (even though I feel like “Fujian Black” is kind of a generic term?). Thanks again to Cameron B. for sending these samples on!

First off, the brewed tea smells pitch-perfect for a delicious Fujian. Like cacao nibs and roasted, molasses-covered grains. The flavor is quite good. Deifnitely chocolatey in a roasted, unprocessed cacao nib way, with lots of toasty grain flavors and malt. It has a thick, bready texture that is quite nice as well.

Overall quite tasty! I definitely enjoyed my cup this morning.

I like the mix of elderberry and cinnamon in this tea. It’s warm, comforting, and incredibly soothing. Everything a good herbal tea should be.

Thank you, kimquat, for adding this to our swap! I’ll be picking up more of this once the cold weather rolls in.

September Sipdowns: 22

I drank this tea two days ago but am just now getting around to noting that I had it thanks to Steepster’s craziness.

Thanks to Cameron B. for a sample of this tea! I will definitely have to write a better note the next time I have it. For now I will just say that to me this tasted a lot like a Taiwanese black tea. But as far as I can tell this is a mainland tea? It has those fruity notes with a touch of honey. Of course there is that odd fruity character that is present in Taiwanese blacks that isn’t my favorite note, but this was a pretty tasty cup of tea anyway.

I’m not a really big fan of chai tea but that’s not to say I don’t like them. This one seemed intriguing, Bi-Luo Chun Black with vanilla beans and chai spices? I love green bi-luo chun and love vanilla and was curious to try this out. As everyone has said the spices in this tea are done perfectly. A wonderful chai spice mixed with the creaminess an sweetness of the tea. Then there’s the vanilla adding a sweetness too. Yummy! However, this has now got me curious. I wonder how plain bi-luo chun black tastes?

I had a couple cups of this tea this morning. I love mao jian tea and I love jasmine but wasn’t sure the combo would work. I thought the jasmine might overpower mao jian which is perfect on it’s own. I needn’t have worried. The jasmine was so light. A barely there jasmine giving it a jasmine scent but not overpowering in taste. A very nice cup.
It went well with the heavy rains this morning and my book I’ve been reading “The Dalai Lama’s Cat.” What a fun book and there’s lots of wisdom in it too.

this is another one that i’m finishing up tonight. While i don’t mind this one, it’s just not something i need to have in my cupboard all the time. It’s a slightly different keemun, and therefore i enjoyed having it. I’m just not going to miss it a ton!

Another cup of the afternoon..not much to say about this one because i’m tired….sooo tired. lol

dropping the rating on this one a little because while it’s still delicious and tasty, i’m finding it’s just not a good tea for the travel mug. Not that it’s the teas fault, but i drink 80% of my tea that way, so i like to have options that work well for both travel mugs and my home mugs :)

I’m still a fan of this tea. As a result, i totally took 3 straight teas to work with me because these straight teas have lots of flavour! I like that this isn’t the usual type of keemun that i usually have. instead this is almost more of a sweet tea versus a little smokey. noms!

mmmmm had a cup of this yesterday from the order i placed and it’s so very tasty. I can’t recall much other than this made me a happy camper :)

mmmmm thanks for sharing this one with me terri. I really enjoyed this one from WP. It’s a different sort of keemun than the ones i generally prefer..less malty, more chocolatey. this will be picked up :)

Still a nope for me. I’d hoped the new version would work because I love this tea…in theory.in execution it’s just doesn’t work for me. It’s like there’s a note in it that always plays out of tune for the rest of the brew. Thanks for letting me try this one again*missb* via omgsrsly :)

nope. still don’t like this tea even with the newer version. The ingredients just don’t seem to blend well for me, and it becomes mostly a lapsang tea….which i like, but then what’s the need for everything else in it :)

meh. not terrible, not enough to make me want more, glad i tried it. still hate steepster.

noms. Back for a cup, i still love this blend. It reminds me of parks department from bellocq but i’m not sure if that’s a reality or just my memory playing tricks on me. I’d pick this one up again in a heart beat from WP except that it drives me INSANE that any time i go to place an order there are maybe 2 teas in stock that i want, and if i have to pay shipping, it essentially means the teas are 5$ more – and that’s hard to justify. Just once i’d love to be able to place an order with all the teas in stock.

…and that ends this tea in my cupboard for now… I’ll be picking up more of this though as i REALLY like it in the cooler weather. Something about the blend of the needles and the berries just works for me. I also like getting a few steepings out of the brew without it going tasteless.

Final Count: 74 (which is great since i have about 15 teas incoming through swaps and a couple orders….though i’m not likely to see the bulk of them until the end of november. )

backlog from last night :) I’m almost done this one, so it appears that i likely should have ordered 3-4 ounces lol I really like this one as an evening tea, especially when it’s cold outside. it reminds me of being up north in the winter. so tasty.

started my morning off with this one even though it’s a herbal. Because it was what i wanted, and i figure i can resteep it tonight when i get home.

ok so THIS is what i wanted sleeping bear to be (minus the elderberries). I’ve had this one before via samples, but there’s something to be said about a brand new unsealed package. This was good through several steeps this morning – i’ll likely need to order more when this is finished up. :)

again… stupid steepster.

this tea was tasty, and surprisingly so as i didn’t expect to enjoy it. thanks terr i for the samples! since i’m not sure how long i’ll actually be able to do anything in steepster!

dear steepster. I’m so fed up with you. really hard to track what i thought about new teas if you’re always down, unusable. I could write it down on paper, and transfer it later but that’s twice the work, and at that point i might as well just switch over to paper. But then, what’s the point? since half the fun is the interaction with the people. reading notes, being able to respond to them….looking up new teas, adding teas to my cupboard etc. 85% of the time, none of that works.

frustratedly yours,

Sil