Manitou Mist

Tea #25 from HHTTB2

Everything I’ve had from Whispering Pines has totally reminded me of nature and connecting to it and I LOVE it!

All the little safflower pieces in my infuser totally looked like reddy orange feathers floating on a pond in sunrise. It’s unbelievably pretty.

Safflower is the dominant flavor, with it’s savory but slightly sweet earthy flavor. The elderberries lend themselves to the tail of the sip, making it end on a lovely sweet-tart note. This is a really relaxing cup. Definitely a tranquil nighttime kind of blend.

I really like this one, It is a very interesting I love safflower and the elderberries are a really nice touch in this one.
Manitou Mist is a very calming peaceful tea to me, I’ve only drank it about 3 times so far but I realized that I like it best late at night before bedtime it really relaxes me.
I think it may even be nice to drink right before meditation too, I’ll try that next time I have it.
I’m really liking Whispering Pines Teas. I just placed a new order with Brenden tonight I’ve just about tried them all, just a few more to go.
There will always be many Whispering Pines teas in my house from now on, an instant favorite place to buy tasty teas online :)

I’m really surprised this hasn’t been reviewed yet.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this tea yet. I need some time to sit with another mug of it.
It definetly remind me of camping (ok so 90% of Whispering Pines teas remind me of camping & I can’t tell you how much I LOVE that!), both in smell & taste. It’s earthy, almost hay like & a bit berry-ie.
The colour it steeps up is so strange. I had it in a white mug & the tea touching the edges of the mug was a yellow-ish/green & the centre was an almost grey/green colour.

I feel like I should be drinking this in a sauna or by a fire.

I received my first order from Whispering Pines today and this is the tea that I tried first.
As all the teas from this and three other orders were sitting out on my counter, the scent from this one stood out the most. I didn’t recognize it as safflower as I didn’t know what safflower smelled like before. To be honest, the smell wasn’t terribly inviting, yet I chose to try it first anyway. I was excited about an elderberry tea. Elderberry syrup is my remedy of choice every flu season and it works! If I could have it in tea instead, bonus! I brewed 16oz to take in a thermos and share with my parents this evening. I only poured a small bit for myself to sample. I was undecided about the first couple sips, but as I finished my small cup, the taste became more comforting and I can definitely see myself stocking up on this for winter time. My mother and sister really loved it and my father liked it OK too so I sold them the rest of the bag (They are moving to Montana in a week, so I thought it more convenient to sell them mine than to place an order when their address in in limbo :p) Now I need to buy more for myself! But I’m out of money for a couple weeks :(

Tea #35 from the Here’s Hoping TTB

It’s been awhile since I’ve ordered from Whispering Pines, but I’ve loved a lot of what I have sampled so far. A lot of the teas remind me of being outdoors, something that I don’t get to do as much when we have two feet of snow on the ground and subzero temperatures. As I was riffling through the TTB I immediately noticed this tea, it was particularly eye-catching, the dark elderberries contrasting with the bright orange color of the safflower. Somehow it ended up getting shuffled to the bottom of my “want to try” pile, so I’m just not getting to it. It has a real earthy taste to it from the safflowers, followed up by the tangy sweet/tart flavors of the elderberries. Such a lovely cup of tea, I’m glad I got to try it.

Finally got my WP order yesterday, whew. I’m dumb and have been real willy nilly about paying attention to what has caffeine and what doesn’t and planning to drink it accordingly throughout the day, so somehow I managed to stick this in the One Touch for first thing morning tea and proceed to drink all the most intriguing seeming black tea blends after dinner last night, whoops. But somehow it worked out! I think it’s the gentle return of spring we’re experiencing right now (or our usual initial psych out at least); it’s helping my circadian rhythms along.

When I threw this in the basket late last night for this morning, right away I was like “oh, oops” because it’s clearly an herbal…a very unusual, striking looking herbal! It’s safflower but it looks like a bag of priceless saffron, a mound of some kind of feathery stamens with little peppercorn-like elderberry woven in. The smell is warm and spicy too, which contributed to that sense of saffron and peppercorn. I went with it and figured if I was still tired after drinking it today I’d just mix up some matcha.

When the cup was ready, I was startled by the color. It’s unusual indeed—the center is unalarming black tea-like, but it’s rimmed with this BRIGHT, algae-like gold-green with gray undertones. Very strange. But it smelled good, warm and gently spicy, like sweet and peppery smelling wood chips (because of that it kind of reminds me of the smell of the lumber yard/fencing section of an outdoor landscaping shop like the kind my parents would drag me to early every summer…I’d alway groan “not the plant store!” but now those sense memories always amaze me with how vivid they are thanks to all the novel seasonal smells). Dove in and yes, I love this! Maybe not for everyone, but I’m amazed two simple ingredients I’ve had in numerous tea blends can be so powerful. This is camping in a cup to me, the smell of drying forest and earth with some sweet heat—evoked the nights we slept in Olympic National Park, how it felt to wake up surrounded by forest. And I actually think it weirdly makes an excellent morning cuppa—it’s incredibly relaxing but the unusual, unique, strong aroma is also stimulating. It puts one in a very tranquil, peaceful mood before facing a hectic day, makes one feel like they’ve woken up in a forest with dew on everything and the echo of birds singing high up in the towering trees everywhere enveloping you like huge corridors—how can you feel too stressed like that? I would definitely reorder this, long wait time or whatever be damned.