Whispering Pines Tea Company

This was a sample sent with my whispering pines order.

I knew this was a blend of two teas but couldn’t recall which ones when I made it. Right after the first sip, I knew there was the Ailaoshan black, but then also could detect keemun. Ah, delicious!
I might even prefer this blend to the straight ailaoshan – it has more grain and chocolate malt notes which meld with the fruitiness so beautifully.
A fancy and gentle breakfast tea, which would also be good anytime of day.

So I was having tea in the nook with the teaplets today, and we got to talking about the Mirk and I decided I wanted to drink some. I ran downstairs to the main tea area, but I COULD NOT FIND IT. I started to have a total cow, running around screaming, “Emergency, Emergency! Level 5 mirk alert! The mirk is MIA!!!”

I searched everywhere for the little brown mirk bag. I worked myself into a tizzy and then realized that the mirk was in a large WP bag, not a mini bag. So I found it, made the tea, and am now happily sipping. Tragedy averted!!!

Oh mirk, how I love thee. Warm and soupy on a freezing cold PA day. <3

SO. Good.

When Brenden asked me if I wanted to try this tea, I was so excited because MUSHROOMS! I love mushrooms. Raw, cooked, in pasta, on pizza, in salad, on anything!!!!

This tea is really yummy. It tastes like a lovely soupy broth, and it’s absolutely perfect for cold winter evening. It’s very hearty and warming. Brew up a huge thermos and make a snowman! Or screw that (too cold)! Just make a giant mug and sit inside by your window watching the crazy peeps freezing their asses off out in the cold! Yeah. That’s the ticket.

I’m drinking this while knitting a blanket. If anyone has partial sock yarn skeins or scraps and wants to trade for tea, PLEASE let me know! I’ll take most colors. I think the pieces just have to be about 15 yards or more. Thanks to madametj for the idea!

Pics!
Mini skeins I got: http://instagram.com/p/v_bXcGPkdo/?modal=true
And the blanket: http://instagram.com/p/v9F1ZSPke1/?modal=true

With some high-quality and relatively complex teas, I can’t really manage to detect all the notes and flavours written in the description. Undertrained palate probably.

But THIS. Fudge, cherries, cocoa powder, malt, cream, vanilla, cinnamon, mineral, barley sugar… I could taste them ALL. Even in the second infusion.

And I was sad when told that someone had thrown out the leaves before I could use them for a third steep. I don’t even usually resteep.

Simply put, I love this a lot and am very grateful for its existence in the universe.

I miss my Golden Orchid :(

It’s all gone now so the closest thing would be GO’s tea base North Winds, which is tiding me over until my next order. It does the job well enough, though it doesn’t hold up well in a travel flask.

Otherwise, I’m really digging this blend, to the extent where I’ll sometimes even forget about the absence of those glorious vanilla beans for a second.

This is the older version and I can’t wait to try the new one when I can.

Backlog sipdown. This might be my favorite straight black from WP, so that was a pleasant discovery. Would be glad to enjoy again and again.

Having a lovely straight black this morning. This tea has notes of roasty dark chocolate and malt without much else to the flavor profile. It reminds me of Laoshan Black, but without the complexity of honey, grains, etc. and with a touch less cacao. I realize that makes it sound not as good, but it really is very tasty in its own way. Sometimes simple is best, and yet very satisfying this morning. Makes for a fine breakfast cuppa!

I didn’t expect to like this tea so much, but I actually really do! Now that I am able to drink higher caffeine again, I have been going for the full-of-flavor selections. This one has the dark chocolate, roasty-toasty malty goodness that I’ve come to realize make up several of my favorite teas. It is nothing too complicated and the leaves are dark, small, twisty, and airy. Both the smell and taste are naturally sweet and full-bodied and it creates a lovely clear brown liquor. And now I has a sad because it is listed as out of stock on the WP website!

I received this tea as a free sample along with the Ailaoshan tea that I purchased from Whispering Pines and I actually like it better! The chocolate flavor is considerably more pronounced – deeper. Toasted rye, apricot and white pepper flavor notes as listed by WP were all present and accounted for. I also picked up on caramel and a pleasantly sweet carrot taste.
This is a cup that you just don’t want to ever end! North Winds is the newest must have in my tea pantry!

Very interesting. I can honestly say that I have never tasted a tea anything like this one. Very unique character. I just didn’t get very much in the way of chocolate notes. It’s there, but very subtle. What surprised me most were the floral, almost rose notes – Almost Darjeeling-like, but not a trace of astringency. The anise/ licorice notes surprised me too. Adding to the eclectic mix were pronounced notes of wood, plum, and an orange cream flavor.
Although this tea is absolutely nothing like I had anticipated (The chocolate notes being ever so subtle) I thoroughly enjoyed every sip. The pleasantly complex uniqueness of the flavor should definitely be experienced. Very nice indeed.

Sipdown (118)!

Brought the last of this with me to work late last week; I finished up at lunch. It was so good. I’ve been kind of flipping back and forth between liking this and finding it unsatisfactory to be perfectly honest. I probably wont buy it again, because my experience has been that it doesn’t brew up all that consistently. However, that said, this final cup was a delight!

Notes of Cherry, Eucalyptus, Sweet Potato, Flowers, Molasses, and a whole bunch of other interesting things! Drinking this tea has certainly been an interesting experience; each mug was a grab bag of flavour notes.

Never a dull cup.

I’m kind of mad at myself, because this cold brew from yesterday was actually meant to be North Winds but the tins I keep North Winds and Jabberwocky in look really similar and I accidentally prepped this one instead of North Winds like planned.

After the last cold brew I did of this tea, which did not resonate with me, I certainly wasn’t looking to repeat the experience – but actually it turned out to be a good thing because this cold brew was a definite improvement on the last, which in a way redeemed this tea in my eyes.

Notes of:
- Eucalyptus
- Sweet Potato
- Stonefruit (Cherry/Plum)
- Flowers
- Malt

Today’s cold brew.

This isn’t resonating with me today; I’m tasting plums, raisin bread, and floral notes but no part of me is reacting to them in a positive way. To be fair, they’re not making a negative impact or impression either. Maybe this just really isn’t the kind of tea you drink cold – that seems like a reasonable conclusion to me.

It’s just ‘hollow’ tasting.

This made a surprisingly very lovely cold brew, and I have to admit I only cold brewed it out of lazyness; I had just finished straining my last cold brew for work and I wanted to start the next brew using one of the teas already in the kitchen instead of going to raid my tea closet but the only tins in the kitchen were straight blends, so I just grabbed the nearest one…

It was very rich, with decadent dark chocolate/baker’s chocolate notes creating a strong current of flavor throughout most of the sip. Honestly, it was the most chocolatey I’ve ever gotten this blend to taste. Then, there was a ripe dark cherry notes that kind of rode the top notes and together with such intense chocolate notes it reminded me of a very decadent truffle.

Other lesser notes were a roasted barley flavor trailing behind the chocolate and a bit more present in the aftertaste and a light handed molasses note that was a bit more of a top note like the cherry. This definitely seemed like an appropriate combination of flavors for an “Alice In Wonderland” themed blend; darker flavor notes but with a fruity/whimsical side? Yes please!

10/10 – would repeat this cold brew again.

Drank this one on the way to work at some point during last week; honestly can’t remember what day that was though. Sometimes I feel guilty about drinking my nicer teas on the commute to work though; usually everything is just so rushed/hectic that I’m not being the most observant person and I feel like I’m missing out on the subtleties and nuances of nicer teas.

This one especially, which has so much going on with it, is one that I really feel like I need to be focused on when I drink it. But, I did make note of a few things I tasted and I know I really enjoyed having it with! It’s a good tea!

Definitely tasted some really rich cocoa and oak notes; and then a darker cherry and oak finish.Black cherries though; not crazy sweet bings or candied maraschinos. While that would have been interesting, it would have totally messed up the dynamic of the tea.

And I just looked up my first note on this one; while some of the things I observed here were the same as my first impression, a lot was different – and that’s part of why I really want to focus next time I have this one!

Sipdown (103)!

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

First the tea stuff, and then the personal rant type stuff.

The Jabberwocky is one of my favourite poems of all time; the other two it’s tied with being Chaos by G. Nolste Trinite and Invitation by Shel Silverstein. I’ve very heavily considered getting a string of words tattoed somewhere, like on a shoulder but I can never pick just one section so it’s likely not going to happen (since I don’t want the whole poem tattoed on myself). So, obviously, I was dying to try this tea. So thanks Marzipan for making that attainable.

Dry I honestly couldn’t smell much, but steeped up (in a timolino) this is so fantastical and complex and that’s why it’s perfect as a Jabberwock tea. Just like you can take many of the words in the poem to mean whatever you’d like, I can see how there are so many layers of flavours in just this one infusion that it can be interpreted so many ways. It’d take a multitude of cups to really come close to doing this one justice describing it, but I’ll definitely give it a stab – with the Vorpal blade-.

Overall, there was a sweetness to this tea, and it was very smooth. While there was easily a dozen flavours going on in here, the ones that stood out to me the most in ranging intensities were honey, wood, molasses, earth, and stonefruits like plums. There was also this kind of “rust” like flavour, but sweet rust – if rust is a thing that can be sweet. I wont bother to rate this yet because I’m sure I’m not even close to understanding it yet, but it’s definitely going back on my wishlist and something I’ll be looking to get more of.

And now the personal rant sort of stuff…

So yesterday I started work at 7AM; personally, that’s REALLY early for me but I set my ability like that and I was prepared to do my shift without complaint. As it happens, it was an eight and a half hour shift. So, a long one. And because buses don’t get to that area of the city as early as seven on Sundays, I walked. It’s a 40 minute walk, in the freezing cold. And that is to say that come 3:30 when I was supposed to be off, I was fucking tired.

There were eight of us who had started at 7AM and were supposed to be done at 3:30 – one for every till. I was on till #1 yesterday, one of the busiest tills (because it’s on an end), and the farthest one from Guest Services where people sign in and out. Come 3:30 I was just drained, and ready for the evening cashier to come and release me. But only five cashiers were scheduled for the evening, and they took off tills 4 to 8, leaving the people on tills 1 to 3 stranded with no relief. This is opening weekend; it was fucking busy, and like I said I was on one of the busiest tills so I had a huge line up. The evening supervisors had just forgotten we were there, and I definitely couldn’t have walked away and gone home without stranding all the people in my line, which is just a dick move.

At 3:45 I called a Supervisor to ask why we hadn’t been taken off. She said she’s go ask. At 4:00 a different supervisor came back and explained to us that no one was scheduled to take over, and asked if I was ok staying until 4:30, because she asked nicely I agreed to stay until 4:30. At 4:45 I called down a supervisor and asked, again, to go home. She said that “sure, you can go home but no one will be taking over your line so all these people will have to wait again”. She said it in front of the people. Holy Hell guilt tactics! So, I stayed – reluctantly and pissed off. At 5:00 she came back and told me to go home. I asked it someone was taking over my till. No. So, I left because I was ordered to, but everyone who was in my line had to go wait in another line including the people who already had their stuff on the belt.

I worked a ten hour shift yesterday, and I was so mad about it. Honestly, if they had been straight forward and asked me to stay late I likely would have said yes because of the overtime, but it’s the fact they just forgot I was there, and then assumed I’d be cool with staying late that pissed me off the most. And, it happened to three of us. Because they let me go at five I couldn’t catch a bus until 6:30 (Sunday bus hours), and I didn’t get home until 8PM, when I should have been home at 5PM. I was supposed to have the evening the rest/relax because I have to work both jobs all week…

Ugh.

I got this tea from u/RedSpaceMagic on Reddit’s r/TeaExchange. I wonder if they’re here on Steepster…

Anyway, this tea looks like a chai. Lots of chunks of cinnamon bark, pieces of marshmallow root, and a blend of very dark leaves. It smells pleasantly smoky, with just a breath of spice, and brews up to a lovely shade of amber.

The tea’s aroma is smoky and wintery with hints of pine. It smells like a mild, spiced lapsang souchong. As I taste it, I’m definitely getting a taste of cinnamon graham cracker. Nothing about it seems particularly marshmallowy, which is a tad disappointing. No vanilla. The chocolate aspect is also a natural one, like you taste in the finish of Fujian black teas. No actual cocoa. That aspect is perfect. Actual “chocolate flavor” additives tend to ruin teas to me. The taste of the actual “campfire” the s’more was toasted over is featured the most.

It’s hard to come to a verdict of this tea. While I really like it and find it comforting on this chilly, stormy day… I was hoping this would be more of a dessert tea. I think if it had just claimed to be a smoky spiced blend, it would have been a bit less disappointing for a marshmallow fan.

I don’t really know what I expected when I tried this…but it just tastes like I’m eating a campfire. xD Tastes kinda charcoal-y, and pretty smokey. This isn’t the tea for me!
But glad I got to try a sample.
Thank you Zach S. for a sample! :D

Nosegasm. More than the visceral “mmmm!” that spontaneously accompanies an exploratory inhale of a new tea, this was actually an “ooooh!” I think this is my highest rating ever for the brewed fragrance of a tea. Seriously as much as I wanted to taste it I was impelled to just continue inhaling it for a minute. In a sublime zen-pleasure kind of way.

Ok, moving on … I wanted to compare this to another Fujian today, Teavivre’s Bailin Gongfu. Brewed both at 3 minutes at recommended temps and quantities.

The Bailin Gongfu was more chewy and caramelly, and had a bit of a lychee note. The WP Fujian was more malty. Where the BG was chocolatey, the WP is a cocoa nib (as Dinosara noted) or much darker chocolate, as well as a noticeably lighter flavor and mouthfeel. The slight smokey note of the BG was absent in this one.

Both evolve well both with cooling down and on the second steep, though the BG held more flavor on the latter. The BG has a longer, richer aftertaste with a bit more astringency to it.

The WP Fujian maintains a malty, cocoa nose while the BG has as a bit of what I can only identify as a whisper of earl grey fragrance that I find in some non- earl grey teas. Why does that bergamotish perfume appear when i’m not expecting it?

Side by side tastings would’ve been a good move but I ended up brewing them sequentially by the cup to keep it simpler. Next time!

After a couple of unexciting samples this morning, I thought I’d have a cup of something I know I’ll like. Mmm… smoky chai. :)

Mmmm, this is lovely. Smoky, spicy… reminds me of sitting around a campfire on a cool fall evening, after dark, with a cup of chai in my hands.