Whispering Pines Tea Company

noms! I have thoroughly enjoyed this one. Made a cup of this after dinner – my other half is going to be working most evenings this week so i’m on my own a lot. I really like that this is sweet with a kick of spicy. I’ll be picking up more of this in future – I really like this type of tea in the evenings while reading a book or relaxing.

mmmmm having a grand cup of this with a splash of honey to smooth out the edges!

mmmmm this is fun and tasty. I like the spicy edge to it that makes it interesting. Really glad that folks have been awesome and let me try out a number of WP teas before i went to place an order (there are a bunch of you! so thanks!) it’s like an echo of sichuan caravan…only not because it’s a totally different tea and has no puerh lol but there’s something there that reminds me of it while being very much it’s own tea :)

Final Count: 96

goodness…i’m sloshy. missB sent this my way and it might be the first whispering pines tea that i really like. I blame the ginger, which seems to be my weakness in teas. I love that spiciness that it brings to the table. Always leaves me wanting more! more! I chose this one as my final cup for the evening in the hopes that it would relax me a little and help clear my head before bed. I’ve been fighting off getting sick for a few days now and i’m really trying to NOT get sick. This is making for a great evening cup though. Thanks MissB!

Final Count: 190 (sooo 6 sipdowns a day = reaching my goal for the end of the month…likely not going to happen..but maaaaybe if i work from home a couple days…maybe… heh)

Forgot that this is a ‘smoky’ tea, all I knew was that it was calling to me today, asking me to drink it. First smell and sip were all smoke, and continued throughout. I only get a touch of something sweeter occasionally, and I guess there’s some cocoa in here, although it’s more smokey, almost bacon-y than anything.

Unsure what I was expecting, however this is very different than my mood today. I think I need to let this sit so I can think about it more, once I’ve finished a few errands.

Sipdown!
I normally don’t like jasmine in my tea, but the mint really helps balance out the floral aspect. Very calming.

This is one of my favorites to cold brew; it’s very refreshing.

I really had high hopes for this tea – since I love rooibos and ginger – yet the combination together came out tasting a lot more like cough syrup than either one. There was a bit of a ginger burn at the back end of each mouthful, but nothing appealing really appeared, no matter how long I sipped at it.

This is another one that I didn’t really manage to enjoy, so it went down the drain as well.

thanks so much Miss B for this sample!

oh my…. it and i are NOT compatible! too much smoke. i couldn’t finish my cup and i didn’t even do a full length steep =0(

i really wanted to love it. i love the back story….. sigh. me and my weird sensitivities!

This one is very smooth, slightly sweet and has many different notes, earthy, smooth, sweet, cocoa and vanilla notes and presence of a slight leather type notes that is rather pleasant.
Nice solid puerh :)

My favorite mug ever! Note that there are only 10 Winter Edition Woodland Mugs left! Once these are gone, they are gone forever! They are also 10% off right now :)

http://whisperingpinestea.com/woodland-mug.html

These Woodland mugs are great, I use mine everyday.
This mug is the perfect size to use with Whispering Pines “Infuser set with dish” and they feel really comfy in your hands when filled with your favorite hot tea.
Lance and I both have one of these little guys(Lance keeps his at work) they are the perfect size for a nice cup of tea and they look cool too.
Only 22 of them made so if you love Whispering Pines Teas You best go and order ya one before they are gone, you’ll love it.

An error of mine (well, PayPal’s) found me getting my stash of this three months after ordering it, and having completely forgotten that I even grabbed it. So, I wanted to really check out some of these teas ASAP, as I realized they’re mostly new, with few reviews posted. Since I’ve been on a huge chai kick of late, I thought this was a fun place to start.

1/2 tb per cup? Hm. Well, I brewed this with 4 tsp in 12oz, which is 1.25 tb… I guess on par with the recommendations. It makes for a very, VERY strong brew. Fine with me, because I kinda like it. Very chai-like, however the first and most present note is the mint, which both cools the throat and the tea’s heat/spice. It’s almost like having one of those icy hot candies in your mouth, with both the heat and the cool present at the same time – but with a chai background instead of chocolate.

With cream added, the mint almost completely disappears, and this becomes a mild chai with a hint of something tart and almost… drying. I get the mint feel and faint flavor if I open my mouth to inhale through it after, but otherwise (for me) the mint goes poof bye-bye.

Interesting, unusual tea. I have a feeling I’ll go through this small size quickly because of the quantity needed, and to see if I have a different experience next time.

This was just ok – or maybe a bit less than ok – what’s less than ok – mediocre?
Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, not unhappy to see it finished.

Thank you for the sample, MissB!

This tea is a hibiscusy mess. I knew it would be going in (and it’s only a mess because it’s not my favourite flavour). The ginger shines through in flavour and heat. The orange is discernible. I suppose the elderberries add sweetness, but I needed honey. Wow, did I ever.

I looked up the tea on their website rather than flipping the package over for steeping instructions. 1/2 tbsp for 5 min, OK I can do that. I had just over 1 tbsp in the bag for a big 16 oz mug. And then after I added the water and put down the packet, I noticed it said “1 tsp per cup”. So yeah. Let that be a lesson or something.

If you like hibiscus and ginger, this could be for you. It would be fantastic iced, for sure. I might do that with the second steep. Sadly it’s just not for me. The ginger is amazing, but the hibiscus is just too much for me without a spoonful of honey, and I’m trying to avoid that. :)

Sipdown!
Definitely reminiscent of sitting around a campfire in the middle of the woods. This tea doesn’t just capture the smokiness of the fire, but also the smell of the outdoors. I usually associate red rooibos as tasting ‘woodlike’, but that works really well in this tea!

This was definitely the winner by a mile in my casual sampling last night of most of the WP blends I ordered. S’mores was kind of odd, not bad but bracingly evocative of things far removed from s’mores (though I can see how a particular mysterious earthy funkiness in it sort of evokes the grain in graham crackers); Mint Chocolate Chip was alright but I’ve other Grasshopper-y teas I like more (with the bonus they’re tisanes so I can drink them late at night, which is when I always crave that sort of thing), not quite as thickly flavored rich and sweet and treat-y as I’d hoped; I’m reserving judgment on Peppermint Chai because I get a strong sense it needs the proper stovetop milk-n’-20-minutes-stirring treatment to do it justice, not the mere whizzed latte deal I did. Nothing undrinkable and everything was at least interesting/compelling/unique. So that’s good!

But this one! So so good. I wish I could give more detail but late night, yadda yadda, hopefully I do a more detailed note soon. It is a great balance of rich satisfying chocolate (that that’s just the Assam is a bit startling frankly, ‘cause it is REALLY chocolatey) and tempering yet invigorating, palate-awakening mint. The two don’t clash at all; they meld so smoothly and deliciously, like an Andes mint but better. Definitely putting this on the “perennial staples shop list”, yum.

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.

This is a wonderful outdoorsy tea blend. the elderberry, cedar and chicory give it roasty, earthy, piney notes while the cinnamon, mint and ginger give it sweet subtle spice notes.
The taste of the Cedar in this one is amazing. I love this!
If you were lost in the forest and you met a friendly elf
I bet he would give you something like this to drink :)

I’m drinking my fifth steeping of this today, after forgetting the leaves for a day or two… It’s not as fantastic as the first few, but still good. I’m sad today and I have zero energy right now, so I hope tea will help…

This tea smells AMAZING and tastes almost as good… I’d been afraid to try it in case it didn’t live up to my expectations, but I finally did last night (and had the later cups with some chai tea monkeybread, mmm…). It tastes fantastic, the comforting familiarity of vanilla, the uniqueness of the cedar tips… but I can’t stop grappling with myself over the price tag. Maybe for special occasions… or just to take out and smell every once in a while.

Whispering Pines has yet to disappoint. This blend is both simple and simply perfect. It has a rather thick mouthfeel, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it bready. The initial flavor is sharp ginger. Spicy cinnamon finishes the sip and builds over time. Definitely lives up to its name. Thanks for checking another tea off my wishlist, MissB!

This is like drinking pine forest. In the spring. On a nice cool day. It’s delicious.