Whispering Pines Tea Company

Since my recent cocoa nib awakening, I have been obsessed and, in turn, delighted with the sweet, creamy, chocolate flavors I have found that they impart.

This tea falls right in line with all of this. A puerh that is also sweet and chocolate-y? Well, yes, I would like to drink that all morning. And I have! This tea really does combine the best of both ripe (smooth, creamy, dark, earthy) and cocoa nibs (creamy, sweet, chocolate).

I am going to have to play around with my own cocoa nibs and other “plain” puerh and see what I can create. Thanks for the inspiration and great tea, Brenden!

Dry leaf: Sweet, small leaf material, well compressed. A little grassy, but clean, like a forest after a cool rain.

Taste: Sweet, clean, white grape juice, nice floral aroma. Very slight bitterness with a nice sweet aftertaste.

Liquor: Clear, light buttery yellow.

Spent leaf: Small leaves and buds. Very good quality and I was surprised to see so many buds. The leaf texture was very soft with an even medium olive color.

Vessel: 125ml clay pot (actual water 100ml)

Happy 5th anniversary Whispering Pines Tea and happy first raw cake production! I was very excited to get this cake. The wrapper artwork was beautiful and the pressing and leaf material were very nice.

As recommended, I went with 190F/87C water temp. This helped work around most of the young bitterness and I also went with a little bit shorter steep times. This tea had a nice light, juicy body that thickened up a little bit in later steeps. It had a nice warming effect and very nice sweetness.

While this tea wasn’t super complex, I’m betting it will age wonderfully and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops. (I’m planning on saving about half the cake to taste next fall.) Thanks Brenden for this beautiful tea!

I don’t have much experience with white teas, and most groups, say for instance Bai Mudan, or most of the silver needle teas, taste very similar to me even from different vendors. This one really stood out for me though.
Nose; Blood orange, honeydew, light hay, clover, bergamont ( for you earl grey lovers ), red raspberry.
Palate; mandarin orange, clover honey, sweet grass, peach, lime, very nice finish and throat.

I found this one really fascinating.
Nose; I got a definite really good cigar note, now I used to smoke cigars so for me this was more nostalgic than off putting, be warned…sweet potato, leather, earth, toasted grain.
Palate; nice full mouth, slight cigar again — so unusual, molasses, malt, sweet potato, a light floral note.

This one is a step up from the Yunnan gold tips.
Nose; Sweet potato, butter, honey, tannin, cocoa, citrus note.
Palate; Sugar sweet on the tip of the tongue, nice full mouth feel, rich, slight lime, sweet potato, once again that honeyed Darjeeling quality, just a touch of bitterness.

Ok, so I need to get caught up on posting some tasting notes….
This one seemed to have some almost Darjeeling or Assam characteristics, I do not drink Indian teas much, but that was the impression.
Nose; sweet potato, light honey, home made chicken soup, light malt.
Palate; Brown sugar, sweet potato, very light floral, slightly bitter.
IMHO nice, but nothing out of this world.

Great Tea!!

I got a sample of this, along with other Whispering Pines Teas, as a gift. Unfortunately, I didn’t review it when I drank it, but I remember loving every sip. IIRC, it was smooth and full-bodied, with hints of sweetness.

Reviewing it here to remind myself to buy it again.

Sipdown. I had one very last underleafed cup of this. 205F. Malty, bready, honey. Good, but not repurchase.

Sample from my last order.
Pretty thick golden leaves, dry leaves smell of chocolate malt
30s- cocoa malt, sweet potato as it cools
At least 5 steeps after this.
Very good
Budz

Nice Dian Hong. On the delicate side, which I happen to like.
Nose; Slight floral, wildflower honey, sweet potato, light aloeswood.
Palate; sweet potato, butter, slight umami, moderately full mouth feel, almost a Dancong like sweetness.

This is overall a very nice tea. It was bittersweet in the start. The bitterness was not too strong or too long lasting. There was a fair amount of fermentation flavor. There may have been some chocolate notes but I wasn’t paying close attention to the specifics. Just the fact that it evolved into a nice sweet tea. I think I can say that by the twelfth steep it had developed a bit of a fruity taste although I could not pin it down to a specific fruit. Overall I really liked this tea. It has been so long since I have drank the loose of this tea that I couldn’t tell you how they compare. This one is definitely worth picking up a cake.

I steeped this twelve times in a 150ml Ru Kiln Shui Ping teapot with 13g leaf. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 minutes. There were maybe three or four steeps left in the tea but twelve was enough for me.

My tea experience began in with a Jasmine Iron Goddess from a wonderful San Francisco tea shop last December. I am so thankful I wondered into the shop on an afternoon away from my meeting. The tea was really good, but I wanted to taste it without the Jasmine. After sipping several wonderful teas from Whispering Pines I decided to purchase a teiguanyin from him. Boy, am I happy I did! A sip of this liquor is like spring becomes alive in your mouth. What a beautiful tea. I got two vacuum packages and think I too will squirrel the second package away.

This is a really tasty tea from Whispering Pines. It is the sort or raw I like most, not real bitter and too young to have developed any unpleasant aged flavors. I brewed this tea at 190 degrees to lessen any potential bitterness. It was really good. As another reviewer mentioned there was a slight grassy note to it. It had what I would describe as a sweet note from the beginning, not sweet like sugar mind you. I didn’t find the flavor notes of apricots that are so often mentioned in young sheng. I am not really sure to describe the sweet note.

I steeped this tea twelve times in a 100ml teapot with 9g leaf and 190 degree water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 minutes. Could have gotten a few more steeps out of these leaves. This is the sort of yound sheng that is good to drink now due to the lack of bitterness.

We have another sample sipdown here. I received this with an order from Whispering Pines Tea Company sometime during the summer of 2016. I found it in the very back of one of my tea cabinets yesterday evening, enjoyed a couple of cups, and then finished the rest of it off this morning. It was a nice Laoshan green tea, though it lacked the fruitiness of some similar teas from other vendors.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick 3-4 second rinse (I don’t always rinse green and black teas, but felt like doing so here), I steeped 5 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 175 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was followed by 13 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of freshly cut grass, hay, soybean, peas, and spinach. After the rinse, the aforementioned aromas were joined by roasted grain and asparagus. The first infusion produced a more balanced bouquet with all of the elements listed above. I detected robust notes of freshly cut grass, peas, soybean, spinach, and hay underscored by less prominent notes of roasted grain and asparagus in the mouth. Subsequent infusions saw the grassiness and the pronounced soybean character mellow a little, as the notes of peas, spinach, and asparagus grew stronger. The roasted grain character began to remind me more of toasted rice at this point, while a subtle mineral presence began to pop up on the finish. The later infusions were mostly dominated by minerals and lingering traces of peas, asparagus, and toasted rice. Very faint impressions of soybean, hay, and grass could be found at times as well.

I have made it no secret that I tend to be a huge fan of Laoshan teas, but I have grown accustomed to Laoshan green teas that provide something of an underlying fruity sweetness. I did not find that characteristic in this tea. It was a very grassy, grainy, vegetal tea. I imagine that it would please fans of grassy, vegetal Chinese green teas, and while I found it to be a satisfying tea overall, I still cannot help feeling that it was missing just a little something.

First!

This is a beautiful new photogenic cake from whispering pines. I haven’t drank from a 100g cake in awhile, so it seems so cute to me and bite sized. The leaves are long and several shades of pale yellow, green, and silver; in which, they are threaded in a mass of puerh goodness. The cake has a very faint aroma of soft grasses and some light florals, but it is hard to tell. The cake is a bit tight in compression, but I managed to jimmy off a section. I warmed my pot up and placed the fox inside. The tea opens into a sweet grassy and wet wood aroma. I can hint at what I call opaque tones (they are cloudy, somewhat milky, its hard to describe…) I washed the leaves once and began my brewing. The brew is incredibly light and subtle, but it has a decent thickness. The drink has the consistency of milk along with tastes of beans, grass, chrysanthemum, and a bit viscosity. The brew hits the tongue with smoothness and softness, but it retracts and bites with a brief tannic bitter. The session continues in this manner. This is a very clean and “springy” tea. The cup never colors darker than pale jade, and the tones never leave the grass and high floral notes of the spectrum. This what I imagine early spring tastes like. I liked the cake, but I am going to be keeping it in storage for bit. This is a fair cake at the price.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRbQfqXg2Yr/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel&hl=en
its a multipic, so you gota scroll for more.

Let me begin this review by saying that sometimes I forget what I have in my tea cabinets and storage totes. Literally, I sometimes buy something, put it aside, and then forget about it. I got so wrapped up in finishing off some of the aged oolong samples I had lying around that I totally forgot about this black tea. What’s worse is that I started working my way through this one a couple weeks ago, took a few preliminary notes, and then shoved it far in the back of one of the tea cabinets. I rediscovered it a couple days ago, tested it to make sure it was still viable, and made a point of taking the time to finish it before moving on to something else.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 205 F water for 5 seconds. I followed this infusion up with 15 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 8 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves gave off mild aromas of camphor, chocolate, and sweet potato. After the rinse, the camphor, chocolate, and sweet potato aromas intensified and were joined by scents of malt, toast, and wood. The first infusion produced a similar, though more balanced bouquet. In the mouth, I mostly picked up mild notes of toast, malt, wood, and sweet potato underscored by subtle notes of chocolate, cream, and camphor. Subsequent infusions were more intense and robust, offering stronger impressions of chocolate, malt, cream, wood, camphor, toast, and sweet potato. Impressions of molasses, baked bread, butter, wildflower honey, and orange emerged at this point. A subtle minerality also began to make its mark on the finish. Later infusions were dominated by impressions of minerals, toast, baked bread, and wood, though fleeting impressions of orange, chocolate, sweet potato, wildflower honey, and camphor lingered in the background.

This was a super nice, supremely easy-drinking black tea. I loved how refined the aromas and flavors were, and I thought the smoothness of the body was extremely appealing. This was definitely one of the better black teas I have tried in recent months. I would recommend it highly to anyone looking for a sophisticated Chinese black tea.

Found Whispering Pines Teas from a steepster member while I was looking for a quality tea to purchase. I decided on Jabberwocky. When it arrived I was so impressed with both Jabberwocky and Blackbear teas that I purchased two more teas. The second order I purchased the Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black tea. Was I glad I did. This tea blew me away with the first taste. A sweet tea without sweetener of any kind? A surprise indeed. Yes, Jabberwocky is an excellent tea and Blackbear has a wonderful smoky taste, but I think the Wild Mountain Black is my favorite from Whispering Pines. Just ordered more today.