Whispering Pines Tea Company

i don’t know what else to say about this one. I rather enjoy it and that’s why i drank it, love it, will get more hahaha. In tea cupboard related news though, i have no teas left from may, so i just need to finish off my three remaining teas from april in order to have a cupboard that is only 6 months old! that’s pretty exciting in my silly books :)

bumping up the rating on this one a little because today, it was positively perfect. Seriously…i am a fan of a number of WP’s straight blacks…possibly even more so than his flavoured blacks :) I’ll have to look at restocking this once i’m through more of my WP teas…still have a few months i can hold off for i think…..maybe….

Final Count: 83 (thanks to Cameron B mostly!)

noms. at this rate i’ll be through all my WP teas in record time! I think i’ve been starved for new straight teas so these have been a welcome addition to my rotation. Not much to keep on saying about this one beyond the fact that it’s a great little tea full of delicious cocoa notes and a slight sweetness that makes me smile :)

dexter sent this one my way so that i could try a few more WP teas before i place an order (gotta love tea friends who share!) . so the minute the water hit these leaves it was like ZOMG CHOCOLATE..HEEELLLOOOOOOOOOO! lol

ugh work… ok so long story short. need this to come back for september so i can have moar. that is all.

This is interesting sheng. Nice woody qualities. I am getting a little bitterness/sourness, but it could just be me. I never seem to do as well with mao cha as I do with sheng cakes. Perhaps I just prefer cakes? Or I haven’t got the brewing down on mao cha yet. Either way, not bad, but with as many other shengs I have found that I REALLY love, I probably won’t seek this one out again. I will definitely re-steep this a few more times and see if anything else interesting comes into play flavor wise. I do really prefer ones with a little sweetness/fruitiness!

Thanks for the opportunity to taste some of it, Cheri! I really appreciate it :)

As before a very nice tea that brings about happy feelings, the wet leave aroma this time smells kinda like cooking spinach.

I’ve drank this one quite a few times now since I received it and I just wasn’t sure about posting my review because it kinda differs from the others and the tasting notes on site, like the lime and cashew and i don’t think I even know what Miso is, not sure lol,
but hey we all taste things differently right?? :)

The dry leafe aroma is sweet and slightly smokey, wet leafe aroma is vegetal and hay-like, it smells like breakfast in the country.
The Tea flavor is nice and delicate with vegetal and woody notes, a little nutty and somewhat savory in general. At times the flavor has some smokey notes as well as an earthy kind of note like woodsy or mossy and a slight sweet pine/cedar type note with floral undertones.
This one also has a nice creamy almost buttery mouth-feel with a slight cooling sensation on the end that is very nice.
This one is quite pleasant to drink and it makes me feel pretty good, i think it has good energy.
I also like this one cold, as it cools the smokey notes increase and a slight pleasant bitter is present, it has an almost completely different profile when cooled.
If you like raw puerhs or green teas or even smokey teas then you’d like this one.

I do think this one makes me high or tea-drunk, it gives me that nice funny, hapy, giddy almost spaced out feeling if i drink enough, hehehe (cloud 9)

I purchased this from a stash sale quite a few weeks ago (I don’t remember whose sale it was). Not sure what I was thinking, since I haven’t really liked milk oolong or green oolong in general in the past. So it’s been sitting around, taking up one of my tins for some time now. I decided I might as well try it before I automatically move it to the rehoming box. The leaves are tightly rolled and in a variety of sizes, and the color is somewhere in the green/yellow/brown spectrum. Dry scent is grassy and vegetal with sweetened condensed milk and peaches. I brewed about 1.5 teaspoons of leaf for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The brewed aroma is pretty much what I’d expect from this type of oolong – buttery vegetal green with cream and some peach notes. And the taste is pretty much along those lines, too. I do appreciate that there’s not really much floral here, even in the aftertaste. It is definitely too light in flavor for my tastes. I will say that this tea tastes creamier and more milky than any other milk oolong I’ve tried, so that’s nice. But it’s still a “no” for me. :)

Cold brewing this one for the last days of summer. Clear honey sweetness, a touch of malt and baked-goods flavor, and a rich buttery finish that lingers on, clearing up to just a hint of something floral. The previous time I cold brewed this tea for a long time (8+ hours instead of 6 like this time), I also got a distinct note of fresh, fibrous stone fruit. As expected, this is a very wonderful iced tea, rich but crisp.

The dry tea for this one comes in little fuzzy golden coils. The name is very accurate! The dry aroma is earthy, with pumpkin or squash notes, like a lighter version of Verdant Tea’s Golden Fleece, which is the only other experience I have with a “golden” Yunnan black tea.

During brewing, the little snails unfurl fully, and the liquor becomes a golden orange color. The taste is rich, again having some mellow pumpkin in the profile, which becomes quite harmonious with delicate sweetness, a hint of something cocoa-like, and an identifiable, crisp and clean black tea fragrance. The finish is very smooth.

Being curious, I brewed Golden Snail and Golden Fleece side by side. The biggest difference might be color—Golden Snail leaned warmer while the Golden Fleece liquor was more green-tinged. In terms of taste, they are very similar, with Golden Snail having less of that lingering buttery finish. But the best qualities of both teas are very close to each other. After trying to compare, I poured the remainders of the two cups together, and that was somehow even better. In order for them to balance each other, there had to be a difference, I just haven’t put my finger on it yet.

I may cold brew this one later to see if I can bring out the full extent of its attributes, and any subtle differences. (After all, cold brewing got Golden Fleece its 100 point rating so it’s only fair!)

Backlog:

As I mentioned in my full-length review of this tea – http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/05/26/campfire-blend-from-whispering-pines-tea-company/ – I don’t think I’ve ever had a tea with cedar leaves in it before, or if I have, I don’t recall it, and it’s such an unusual ingredient that I would like to think that I would have remembered it!

I like this blend. The cedar lends a very rustic sort of flavor to the cup. The chicory and cloves add to that rustic quality. Pleasant, autumnal, this tea makes me want autumn to get here quickly (as does the heat that we’ve been enduring over the past weeks).

Very flavorful, I like the rich, robust black tea base, and the rooibos lightens the cup a little bit and adds just a touch of sweet, nutty flavor.

Aaaaah. This.

It deserves all the praises.

Just a quick review cause I have fully reviewed it in the past.

Rivendell gives me a pudding mouth. It’s so sweet and creamy!

This vanilla is decadent…very fragrant, velvety and fruity.

I like the little saltiness I get at the end of every sip. Mineral notes from the oolong.

Surprisingly, this is not floral at all for a green oolong blend. That’s probably because of the cedar leaves. They bring a touch

of spiciness and evergreen. Hard to describe but so fresh and yummy.

Even if you’re not a fan of greener oolongs, you should still give this a try.

I brewed it in my glass pot and sipped 32 oz very slowly…it was pure ecstasy at every sip.

I’m not lowering my rating, well worth 100!!

Pic:

http://instagram.com/p/y5U4Jnwh-H/

It’s 2 am and I just spent the last four hours going back and forth inside/outside the house. There were possibilities of auroras tonight, that’s why. I feel very lucky to have witnessed them more than once in my life…

I was telling friends earlier that auroras had been life changing for me… totally worth being patient for. I wish for everyone to witness them at least once in their lives.

Unfortunately, they didn’t happen tonight.

Oh well…another night hopefully.

Now I’m drinking this tea and shockers! It’s good.

This is a mouthful of fresh evergreens and creamy buttery oolong.

Dame Vanilla adds all kinds of velvety and fruity notes to the blend.

Just wow.

I don’t have a bunch to say, see previous review.

I will just nom it till it can give no more.

And that’s all.

For different reasons, I waited a long time to get this blend home. I already knew I was going to at least like it, cause it’s made of three ingredients I love: TGY, cedar leaves and some mighty vanilla bean.

In my mind, if you’re going to name a tea Rivendell, you better deliver…cause you know, we’re talking about the epic world here, full of magic, mystery and unusualness.

I’m using a small gaiwan.

As soon as the water hits the leaves, I feel transported. Sweet Jesus. I can’t really come up with words to describe the scent, hard to do it justice. I’d say it smells like a delicate vanilla flower that has grown in a luxuriant forest. The best I can come up with.

The first sip and I’m thinking nooooo!!!! Tea Whiz of the Woods, what have you done? Giving me another addiction, really? I can’t take this anymore. My monthly order keeps growing and growing!

I completely got lost in the session and forgot to take notes. Suspended in time, I just enjoyed the moment. But it’s easy to remember what it tastes like. Not so easy to attempt a description. It confuses me. TGY, check, I like it on its own. But how could the addition of only two other ingredients morphs it into something so different?

First thing that hit me was how creamy it was. I mean there’s creamy and creamy. This is intense creamy. Vanilla pudding mouth.

Then, nice subtle florals are flirting with that fresh menthol mouthfeel that I get from good TGY, amplified by the cedar leaves.

Some fruit notes also join the party. To me, they taste like pineapple and dehydrated apples. I picked that up cause I eat lots of dried apples, I love them. That gongfu session produced many steeps, all better than one another

This tea delivers. It breathes magic, it’s mysterious and unusual. So yeah, it totally deserves to be called Rivendell.

(I can even picture Hobbits, serving this tea to their guests in their Hobbit houses!)

I have no choice but to give the highest rate.

Tea Hobbit, giving it 100 is like giving you a “Tolkien” of my appreciation, hehe. Love it!

Pic:

http://instagram.com/p/r8QLZmwhyU/

I got a sample of this today from MzPriss

I really wanted to love this tea, I really did.

I liked it a lot, but I didn’t love it. It smelled amazing, but the tea itself was just very good and not amazing. It was cocoa and vanilla and something else. But it wasn’t amazing.

I prefer Cocoa Amore over GO.

Who knew? I wasn’t expecting that after all the love this tea gets. But it is what it is and I’m honest about it.

I’m really glad I got to try it. It helped me decide what to order tonight, because after the day I had, I needed more of the River Rain. And I’m still good on the CA, so I didn’t have to order that, but I did order more Arbor Mist, because I’d like to try aging that.

So after a good dinner, and a successful order placed, totally breaking my tea buying hiatus, I’m going to have some gelato, a mug of tea and head to bed.

sweet potatoes and bread and..honey? Thanks for sending this one my way dexter While it’s a lovely tea, I prefer the way the eldergrove blend tastes. This was one that i would have picked up, so i’m happy to be able to cross it off my list, though it IS tasty. Keep up the great work brendan! :)

This was my first loose-leaf white tea, and it won’t be the last. There is a sort of juicy almost “mouth-watering” effect that the flavor has. I have not experienced this with any other types of tea, and as this is my first white tea I am unsure if this “juicy” property is found in other white teas or if it is unique to this tea in particular.

The crisp notes of hay are definitely in the spotlight, shadowed by a quiet sweetness and a very subtle honey/melon-like tone. I usually add a bit of sugar to my teas, but this one works just fine if not better without it. This tea is everything I imagined white teas would be; delicate, crisp, and clean. I look forward to seeing how this tea will stand up to other whites as my cupboard grows!

Brewing notes:
The tea leaves are pretty long so I tend to want to weigh my leaves rather than measure them. I’m not sure if measuring these leaves is as inconsistent as I am imagining it, but I just can’t imagine the leaves are going to fall into the tablespoon the same way every time you measure. I used 4g in 8oz of 190F water for 3/5/8mins.

Pass the Stash TTB 2
This is an interesting one. I don’t think I’ve had a minty black tea before. I like the mix of the keemun smokiness with the brightness of the mint. It’s ingredients include elderberries and lemongrass but I don’t get any of those flavors in my cup.

Another lovely, amazing, generous sample from Dexter in my quest to try more WP teas before i make my first purchase. I know this wasn’t the tea for dexter, so i wasn’t sure what to expect. Especially since i also know that my dear teafairy enjoys this one.

After brewing this one, and trying a few steepings, i’ve come to the conclusion that i don’t know how i feel about this one. On the one handle i enjoy the complexity and the “different” feel of this tea…on the other – it’s fairly expensive a tea, and not likely something that i could afford to drink often, so is it worth it? I have other teas that i ADORE that are less expensive and bring me great joy. I enjoyed the cedar notes in this, and i really do love the base than brendan uses. I think though, that i’d be better off to splurge on another tea for the price. that being said, i did enjoy this tea and i can see why others have fallen in love with it. It’s just not high enough on my list to warrant purchasing :) At least not often heh. Thanks again Dexter!!