Campfire Blend - v106 (2011-2013)

Merry Christmas, Steepster Friends!
Hubby and I enjoyed this tea today.
It just tastes so Christmas-y to me and was perfect for cozying up to the tree and opening gifts.
See previous tasting note for more on this tea.

Sipdown! And thank you again to the lovely Hesper June for letting me try this one. Still not my favourite cup of tea but it does give me hope that I may enjoy some of the other blends that Whispering Pines tea company has to offer as i can sense the potential in the tea, even if this one seems all over the map resulting in a kind of boring tea. One more down..and technically one more to go to hit my goal for this weekend! woot woot!

I’m giving this tea the chance to make me like smoky teas haha, so far I’ve only had DavidsTea’s LS and it was just too much for me. So here we go with this one! The dry smell is nicely smoky, not overpowering, but definitely a lapsang blend. There’s a faint hint of spices as well. I steeped to Whispering Pines recommendations, 5 minutes with boiling water. The resulting liquor is dark, deep red, and smells primarily of smoky pine but with a sweetness and a spiciness.

As for the flavor…yes! This is more like how a smoky tea should be! It’s quite tasty! I get a lovely smoked pine note of course, but there is some body to this tea, I think from the rooibos. That also probably adds to the slightly woody flavor. The spices are definitely in there as well, and a hint of the citrusy orange melds in too. As it cools, it seems like the flavors meld together even better. I can actually tell this is a blend with LS, it doesn’t overpower. And none of that sickly aftertaste of cigarettes in this one!

Overall, I am quite impressed with this tea. It is making me see that I might be able to like smoky blends after all :) very happy I picked up an oz of this to try!

11 different black teas? Awesome! Plus Rooibos? Cool! AND Spices and Orange Peel? Woot!!!

I’m excited!
Let’s try it shall we???

It smells smoky and orange-E. The color of the liquor is that of a rooibos but also a medium-dark brown combined.

It’s smoky but not overly-so…not like a straight-up Lapsang Souchung but still very nice and fitting to the name. The mesh of 11 black teas in the base are interesting…something I have never tasted before! That I like and appreciate all of the thought that went into it.

I can taste the orange and it’s lovely. Again, not overpowering but I’m happy it’s present. The spices seem to mesh really well with eachother as well as the black tea base. I can’t pick out one spice over the other(s)…it’s a nice combo – that’s for sure!

It’s earthy and woodsy…true to it’s name, too! It’s slightly sweet which is a nice surprise. It has a sweeter-maltiness to it, too! I REALLY like that!

It also has a very subtle taste of mineral/rock type taste…reminiscent of Wuyi Rock Oolong, perhaps.

I really like this because it is so different. Also because you can tell a lot of thought and work went into it. It certainly lives up to it’s name :)

:( I tried this one after my massive lack of success with DT’s Cherry Cola tonight, and unfortunately, don’t like this one much better. The aroma is fairly light and mild, with a bit of a familiar and slightly unpleasant aroma. I feel like it’s an aroma I’ve associated with a black tea in the past, but I can’t for the life of me remember which. The unpleasant-ish aroma follows into the flavour – I’m left with quite a light blend, where I can taste a touch of sweetness that’s unfortunately coming off as something a bit rotten, alongside a pleasant black base. I wonder now if it’s the rooibos causing this…

Anyhow, I was certainly hoping for a whole lot more than I got from this blend :( Although there was a lot of orange peel, that’s certainly not a dominant flavour in the blend (in fact, I can’t even really taste it). I can only catch the barest hint of smokiness; given that this is a “campfire blend” I would have expected more. There is a creamy, pleasant aftertaste, which I wish had more impact upon the rest of the blend, but that’s its only redeeming factor (though, I say that as this tea grows on me a little… I’m trying to give it a chance by drinking the whole cup, which does seem to be improving my opinion of it, but not enough to ever re-purchase.)

Anyhow, I do wish I had better things to say about this blend, but it’s fairly bland (I used 2 tsp for ~10 oz. water, and it got a full 5 minute infusion in boiling water) and has a bit of an odd flavour (although I’m wondering if cross-contamination from other samples from Whispering Pines could be a partial cause of this). Oh well!

ETA: Although I just burnt my tongue on a different tea…. grumbles, the re-steep of this one is fairly decent. Half the water, 6-minute infusion at boiling. I’m tasting light spice, perhaps a hint of citrus, and none of yesterday’s wierdness. I will try this one again soon and hopefully it will be better then! Perhaps let it air out a touch.

TY to Whispering Pines Tea Company for having a weekly drawing – and woot, I won tea!
http://whisperingpinestea.com/drawing.php let’s go tea peeps, enter!

DRY: very spicy smell! Clovey!

STEEPED: Black tea brown colour, smells kinda smokey with a hint of sweet.

TASTE: Very earthy and woodsy, full of flavor and slight smokey. The cloves are present but not overpowering, and a hint of citrus at the end. Interesting, the tea is smooth and the flavors mix well. No bitterness or astringency.

I tried this tea with a bit of honey and a splash of soy milk and it turned out very well – honey with this tea is very tasty!

COMMENTS: I’m thinking latte with this one.. or next time my Dad visits he’ll ask for this tea every morning until I’m out. The spice level is nice, the black tea base is interesting – I was really worried this was going to be bitter, but it wasn’t.

This is a beautiful tea. It’s smooth (yet I can’t understand how it’s smooth with the amount of different teas in it), yet kind of smoky, but not overly so.

It’s nicely spiced & a touch citrusy. It’s just yum. I hate when I love a tea, but failed to buy enough of it. This is one of those teas. So far I have liked every tea I’ve had from Whispering Pines.

Really smoky and really tasty!

This has got to be the version I have, as mine has orange peels in it.

I think it might maybe be from Bonny? Foolishly I didn’t write anything on the bag. And that is indeed my horrendous scrawl, so I must have shared it out with a few people.

This is actually pretty good! The smokiness of the black tea actually holds its own with the MULTITUDE of cloves in there. I’d say it’s a lapsang souchong with touches of something else. Pretty decent. Really nice with milk, but I’d prefer some maple whipped cream. ;)

In other news, New Job is Best Job. Friendly, fun to organize, they feed me. Yay! As it’s union, it’s still only temporary. Once the job listing goes live I’ll be able to apply for it. :D So excited.

I’m wary of smoky teas in general, but I can make an exception for Whispering Pines. I get along with their brand of smoke better than I do any other, and their blends are so gloriously evocative it seems more like part of an experience than just smoke for the sake of smoke. So, although I’ve let this one languish for a while, I’ve finally pulled it out to try on this cold January morning!

I used 1 tsp of leaf, and gave it a cautious 3 minutes in boiling water. While brewing, the scent is strongly smoky. It’s immediately obvious that this is a lapsang blend! After a couple of minutes, the smoke does fade a little, and some of the spice notes start to come out.

To taste, this pretty much encapsulates the experience of sitting around a campfire on a cold night. The smoke is prominent in the initial sip, and is a little resinous and piney, like burning logs. It’s also somehow “soft”…a gentle smoke, rather than being harsh and acrid. Even if you’re not a fan of smoky tea, this one is palatable.

A mild spiciness emerges in the mid sip, primarily characterised by the dank flavour of cloves. This works really well with the campfire/forest evocation, reminiscent of damp leaves or earth after a heavy rain shower. There’s a hint of orange at the very end of the sip, which brightens the flavour a bit, but it’s fleeting and barely there. I can’t really detect the rooibos at all, although I noted the tell tale red leaves when spooning this into my infuser. Perhaps they’re responsible for the “softness” I can taste – I can’t attribute it to anything else!

I’ve tried a few smoky teas, but this has to be one of my favourites. It’s very natural-tasting and by no means overpowering, and I would extend my rather cautious brew time in future now that I know the smoke flavour isn’t too acrid. An evocative wintery delight.