Whispering Pines Tea Company

Sipdown (146/153)!

And here’s where the crazy weekend kinda begins. Sorry guys, mostly this notes not gonna be tea relevant; just sorta a heads up. I mean, there’s some tea relevant stuff but not a tonne. And I guess I’ll just get the tea relevant stuff out of the way first, sorta.

So Tyrell picked me up from work Friday night and we went to Lucas’s house warming party, which was definitely an unplanned venture. I pretty much didn’t know anyone there except Tyrell and Lucas/Gwyn (DT Friends) who actually didn’t show up until a few hours before we left, and it was their party…

So the first couple hours of the night I just kinda sat super awkwardly on the patio sipping this tea from my timolino. I’d made it for work but hadn’t had it yet so I took advantage of a hot beverage on a cold night. Tea is comforting. I added milk to this in the morning, and I remember the whole thing tasting very smooth and like cocoa/vanilla/malt. Definitely pleasant, and it helped me relax and feel at ease.

And now is where pretty much all tea relevant stuff goes out the window, because once I’d finished sipping down the tea I started to sip down other stuff. Yeah, I sorta refilled my 12 oz. timolino with 12 oz. of straight gin, which it turns out was NOT a good idea. At this point my evening goes really, really fuzzy.

Basically I remember talking to Tyrell’s friend Josh about film school which he went to in Regina! Turns out we have a couple mutual friends. I remember vividly wanting to cry because I miss my Regina friends, but not actually doing it. And then I remember just shouting “PETER CAPALDI” very loudly. According to Tyrell it turns out I had quite the in depth conversation with many of the ‘party goers’ about Doctor Who and my favourite Doctors and all the routes they could take with Capaldi. And apparently I insisted to several people that he is an owl. Ok.

…And then my memory jumps to being at Tyrell’s place where I ended up spending the night. I have vague, general memories of falling off the bed and flat out refusing to get back on it, searingly bright lights (the bathroom?), and making out before passing out. So I’m gonna go ahead and say it was a good night.

In the morning Tyrell basically tried to sum the night up for me because man do I have gaps. This is the first time he’s seen me really drunk and I guess I didn’t visibly look drunk at all until we got to the car (which I have no memory of; I have no recollection of leaving the party and getting to Tyrell’s) and at that point he was sorta just like “Oh shit, she’s really, really drunk”. Like, apparently I faked being mostly sober super well while we were around his friends to the point where everyone was/is just convinced now that I’m like pretty much an alcoholic because I drank 12 oz. of straight gin with “no effect”. Yeah, there was totally an effect.

But good for me I guess; I didn’t embarrass myself in front of a bunch of strangers, and according to Tyrell I’m a really fun/ny drunk so hooray! Man did I feel like shit in the morning though. Like, I definitely only got a couple hours of sleep after having passed out – after that I pretty much was awake all night because fuck beds. I don’t know how you crazy people all do it (and yes, I am aware that really I’m the weird one). Couches are so much better.

How I survived the drive home and getting ready for work (yeah, that’s right: I totally worked the day after – I am not a responsible adult…) without curling up on my couch and falling asleep is definitely a mystery to me.

Sounds like my tea twin VariaTEA had a cup of this one too this evening; it’s been a while since we both made the same tea during the same day I do believe. Although, I do have to thank 221Tea because she was the lovely human being who provided me with a sample of this one!

Mostly, I think my thoughts on this echo VariaTEA’s; a little malt, a little bread, a little cream, a little chocolate and a whole heaping bundle of vanilla! Gotta add in too that I thought this one improved the cooler it got; it was somehow smoother and richer at a lower temperature.

Overall I thought this was good, dare I say it very good. Would I order it? Maybe. But I don’t know if I’d need to get it in any sort of quantity. More than likely I’ll just occasionally swap other Steepster members who are obsessed with this one for cup or two sized samples of it. I feel like that would be enough to keep me happy.

Quite literally the best tea I’ve ever had.

No I am not drinking this right now and I didn’t just finish any. I’m SQUEEEEEEEEEING because I HAVE some now and will get to have it before bed.

Texas has been in a drought for quite a while now. It has been dry and sad. A few years ago, Texas caught on fire. I wish really hard for rain all the time.

This afternoon on my way home from work, I stopped at my local herb shop for some additional dried elderberries because of Northern Sweet Tea (ask Brenden). The shop is in a small stone house in a neighborhood and is a magical little place. In addition to herbs, they have tea and teaware. I got my elderberries and a darling little tea mug with infuser in a delicious green.

Just as I walked out of the shop it began to rain slowly at first but with great fat drops that increased in speed and decreased in size. I stood on the sidewalk and let the rain pour down on me for about 10 minutes. I’ve missed it so much.

As soon as I got home, I washed my new mug and brewed 2 teaspoons of this dainty looking little tea in 12 ounces of 180 degree water for 1.5 minutes. Now, I’m not a huge fan of green tea. It has to be right. I was not surprised to find that this tea is very, very right.

TeaFairy called it a lullaby and I agree. It would send you off to sweet dream land. But I can also imagine this iced on a brutally hot August day in Texas when it’s 109 and I’m in need of sweet cool salvation. The combination of sweet clean green tea with wildcrafted pine needles and a delicate jasmine is perfectly balanced. None of the ingredients overpower the others. Too often jasmine tea takes up your whole mouth-space with JASMINE – not this, it’s sweet and tastes like pure floral rain after a long dry spell. ADORE!

Brenden sent this tea as a sample a while back. I’ve been ignoring it in favor of all the other delicious tea I have. The other night I read a note on it by TheTeaFairy. It reminded me I needed to try it. Another new WPTC addiction.

And here’s the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1DdwrsdTo (heh :)

Sad Sipdown (made even sadder because this was removed from my cupboard so my number doesn’t change).

Anyways, I decided to splurge since tomorrow I am starting a clean eating challenge and that means no tea. So, for my last day of tea (for the next two weeks), I decided it was finally time to break out the last of this amazing sample courtesy of Cavocorax. This tea is creamy, bright, fresh and delicious and I am sad to see it go.

What’s one of the best things about living near other steepsterites? Drive-by tea drops. Today I was able to pick up two boxes outside Cavocorax’s door (one for me and one for Sil) and deposit a box for Cavo in it’s place. I was so excited to go through the many samples I had to try and after four long hours of work, I was able to come home and brew up a cup. I went straight for this given the love it’s been receiving recently on this site.

I gotta say, I am jumping on the Golden Orchid bandwagon because this is delicious. It’s a little malty, a little bready, a little creamy, a little chocolatey, and a whole lot of vanilla. Mmmm tasty! Thank you Cavo!!! I now see a Whispering Pines order in my future but first to try the other samples Cavo generously shared.

ETA: I am not loving the resteep of this cup. The vanilla is gone leaving behind bread and chocolate but not in a way that the flavors are meshing as nicely as they did with the first steep. Usually I don’t resteep my teas anyways so I am not too bothered by a poor second performance (and by “poor”, I don’t mean bad…just not as good)

Drinking this “Laoshan style”… I used to drink only my Dragonwell this way, but a certain Tea Whiz of the Woods mentioned that method worked with pretty much all teas.

For those who are unfamiliar with the method, this is how I do it. I use a tall glass preferably, and poor low temp water on the leaves. When they sink at the bottom, I start to drink. When the glass gets 2/3 empty, I refill. If you are using good quality tea, it NEVER gets bitter.

I like using a crystal beer glass cause I don’t burn my fingers this way. Here’s a few pics:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/14565779587/lightbox/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/14751914512/lightbox/

Now the tea. It’s such a lovely pretty tea. (Aren’t WP teas all pretty? What’s up with that?)

The taste is so friendly, it’s smooth, not overly vegetal nor grassy. It’s got sweet tender buttery green beans notes.

It’s got that marine breeze saltiness I like so much, I’m eating macadamia nuts and it just goes so perfectly with that taste.

If you shy away from green teas because of their ususal grassiness, this tea is for you. Oh, and please don’t throw out the brewed leaves. They are so good and tender. Add them to green smoothies, stir fries or salads. They are delicious, not bitter at all!

Now, a long Story…skip if uninterested.

My dog Dexter has been a little nervous at night lately. We’ve had a possible beak in attempt a few nights ago…while I was in the house. The alarm company sent the police over, big commotion, could not determine what really happened.

My dog is a big baby, but he can be such a bad ass mofo (this word is a courtesy of MzPriss)

The police told me he does a better job than any alarm system will ever do. They say if a doberman lets you in…it won’t ever let you out.

So the next night, when I heard him growling at the same door from which the supposedly break in attempt happened, I got scared.

So I did what any bad fake blonde actress in a lame B horror movie would do. I did it people. I opened the door and got out on the deck. (Fake dumb blond reenactment) «Hello? Hello? Someone there?» Silence. Pitch dark, I don’t have city lights in my neck of the woods…but then I heard alien noises…hmmmm…was I about to have an encounter with the third kind? Flashlight time, pointed it towards the noise source. This is what I found:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/14748863064/

Awwww…. Little baby raccoons feeding off my bird feeder!!! They froze and stayed there. I had time to go grab the camera, put it on night mode and get this amazing shot.

Now, was this dynamic duo responsible for the break in attempt? They would not tell me. But I’d like to think they were…and I’d say that’s a guilty look if I ever saw one!

Tea of the night…

I love my little green teas. Yes, they are my little ones. I don’t drink them as often as my blacks and oolongs but I do appreciate them. Yes, I play on the dark AND the green side!

This is like drinking morning dew. As if I had gone out at the first hour of the day to collect in my glass steeper enough little grassy drops to fill a decent tiny cup. In French, morning dew is called “la rosée”, I love that word, it sounds so soft and fluffy, just like this tea is.

I took a picture…

I know, I know, I often like to show…well see, I don’t have a blog but I take pictures all the time, especially tea pictures, so why not share them? Of course you don’t have to click, I won’t be offended… But for those who love to watch, here it is:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/laafeevertee/14377042107/

Isn’t it pretty and tender looking? Like beautiful seaweeds, moving in slow motion.

It tastes so fresh and vegetal, a bit salty and marine. It’s a pure and clean taste. The type I love to pair with fish.

I threw this one in my cart on last order cause ya know…my plan is to try ALL existing Whispering Pines teas!!!

Thanks Courtney for allowing me to steal a small sample of this from your stash! it was just as dark and rich and chocolatey as I imagined and I can totally see how this is the perfect base for the Chocolate Chip tea.

OMG. Just. It’s so good.

Thanks! (157)

This samples comes to me via Miss B. Thank you!
I am really enjoying this tea! I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was not this. This is much better. The star of the show is the mint, which I find to be a little sweet and gentle; pretty much perfect in that it’s not too in your face. The tulsi and maté pairing is unusual, but I like it a lot. It’s roasty and a tiny bit vegetal. It hangs out until the end of the sip and then really rounds out the experience. Why on earth is this discontinued?? It’s magical. It would greatly increase my tea joy if I could purchase some. Just going to put that out there…..

TeaTiff inspired me to try this tea. It’s perfect for a hot muggy morning. I cannot start my day with iced tea. It should be hot and black.
Steeped according to WP parameters 1/2 tbsp 200F 8 oz 3min
Resteep was equally good at 5 min
This tea is beautiful amber color. It is light bodied, sweet like faint honey, some pine notes which are also light. It is not smokey at all for me. I wouldn’t mind some smoke but I know many ppl hate smoky teas. So no fear. I also detected some florals but again not like floral oolongs. Everything is delicate , nice and smooth.
I have to admit Im not Keemun expert, just had a couple besides blends so I won’t rate it.
But Im happy that I picked an oz and once I run out of it I will restock.

This tea made it hard to drink and think. Some teas are very easy to drink and review….the flavors are like sitting ducks, just out there waiting to be identified….like a little string of decoys on a lake at gloaming. Some teas….the most INTERESTING teas deny such easy identification to the tongue and make you work for it. This Bi Luo Chun is that kind of tea.
The first thing I noticed was the creamy smoothness of this tea. Well, that’s not a flavor per se, but it was my first impression. Then, as I tried to deconstruct this tea and identify what I was tasting, my brain kept interrupting with “mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”….ok, there’s some sweet potato note but no skin on the sweet mmmmmmmmmmmmmm potato. I’m getting some light earth mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm notes and they’re really well layered with a mmmmmmmmmmmm grain note and some….some…mmmmmmmmmmolasses……..

This tea is beautifully balanced. The flavors layer with amazing intricacy, like a tapestry from days gone by. Try drinking it with your eyes closed. Bliss.

This fall is CRAZY! I have been drinking tea, but for many reasons I have not been able to log on here much. I am so sad. This is the last of this tea. I am in love. This is always such a calming cup. I have found I like an EXTRA BIG teaspoon of this one. It has become one of my favorite at work teas. I will definitely be reordering this at some point when my life and cupboard are back under control.

Wow, is this what all Keenums taste like? This is really really good. I almost placed my order yesterday thinking that eh, the Keenum sample I got wouldn’t prove order worthy. Boy was I wrong. This was really good. Did I say that already? For me it was a bready sweet taste. There wasn’t a smoke taste like I was expecting. This had me wanting to drink the entire sample pack in one sitting. On the order it goes, and I thought I could weed it down… doh! For those more seasoned keenum drinkers who have had THIS tea, how does it compare? Have I been missing out on another really good type of tea?

It’s one of those super rare indulgent lazy Sundays today in my house! 11am and the hubby is still fast asleep and I’m still in bed, in my pjs, reading a book and drinking tea…. A relaxing, super enjoyable morning calls for an amazing favorite tea and without even needing to think I pulled GO out of my cupboard! I’m almost at the end of this bag and so my cup is full of those little black specs that I love so much but are bittersweet because it means I’m back to waiting again for the next release of this blend. One of my absolute favorite teas of all time!!

Oh Golden Orchid…. I absolutely love it when i get to the bottom of the bag and the top of my tea cup ends up covered in floating black specks of vanilla goodness… BUT… I absolutely hate it when I get to the bottom of the bag as its my last cup until Brendan takes pity on me and makes more :(

This is seriously delicious! Cocoa and vanilla mingles with delicious tea – I’d forgotten this purchase at the back of my cupboard and hadn’t had the pleasure of trying it, now that I’ve found it, I think the bag will be lucky to last the week!!! And I’m sure another bag will be on its way to me very soon after that!!

Thought this was gonna be stronger, but it was still good. I don’t like teas that only taste like honey, but I love teas with the perfect combo of honey and malt. Also pretty chocolatey. So it’s definitely a win!
Black teas are always gonna amaze me, I tell ya! I still think it’s crazy how much flavor black teas have. I never even tried them because I thought they’d just taste like…I don’t know…Wood or something….Which makes like 0 sense. But I’m not too bright.
Haha I’m just so glad that I have come to realize how freakin’ magical black teas can be! Anyway, this tea is definitely a win! I have a bad feeling I’m gonna spend a lot of money on these WP teas. I blame TheTeaFairy…she makes all of the WP teas sound amazing. But hey, least her reviews are spot on! :P

To prevent people from thinking Whispering Pines might pay me to write such raving reviews…I will try to show some restraint for this next note.

This is an average roasted oolong
I looove this type of oolong sooo much, this one looks and smells FANTASTIC, nothing average about it!!!

I am using the Gaiwan. I show no sign of excitement while I’m waiting for it to cool down a bit.
are you kidding me? I can barely breathe, that’s how impatient I am, I could just dunk my whole face in it, that’s how tempting this is…so what, second degree burn.

The color of the brew is brown.
omg the liqueur looks like the most beautiful dark amber colour I have ever seen!

I’ve had another roasted oolong last night, so nothing new and special here…
well, yesterday I drank my favourite roasted oolong EVER, so yeah,I’d say there is something special here, cause I’m super picky and this tastes amazing!!

Ok, sorry but I’m back to being my enthusiastic self. Sorry.

I love this. It’s sweet, it’s very roasty, taste like caramel and coffee. Like a nice shot of espresso. Not that I drink that much coffee anymore, but every now and then, I get my fix and this tea could totally do the work instead. Also, i bet this would make the most delicious Tiramisu dessert ever.

It will not replace my Butiki 2003 Reserve Four Season oolong, but I loved it and it’s absolutely worth keeping around!

This is a sad sad sipdown. My last cup of North Winds. It will be a month or two before I can order more so this will be missing from my cuppoard for awhie. I have hoarded this last cup for quite some time. It is a great cup this morning. Deep dark cocoa notes. Not too many bright fruity notes to take away from the dark side. I am sad to see this go, but I am also excited to get my hands on the new version.

I am sipping on a cup of this to start the morning off today. The dark chocolate smell wafting from the cup had my mouth watering even before it was done steeping. The taste, never disappoints. Chocolate, and caramel. Just pure yum in a cup.

I will be honest the new version of this tea scares me a bit. Once you find a tea you love and crave any slight change to the tea is noticeable. It has Brandon’s stamp of approval so I will have blind faith that I will love it just as much. There is 1-2 servings left of this tea so I should probably place another order soonish.

My stash of this tea is almost gone. I am getting a little anxious about it actually. I am going to try to finish most of my WP stash before ordering again, but this is sooo good. It is another tea like Golden Monkey that is consistent for me. No matter my mood or time of day I seem to love it. There are very few teas in my stash that I can say that about. I do have to say that having this tea and then having Golden Orchird, I am not a Golden Orchid groupy with this tea. The base is just too good. That is okay. You can’t love them all. I am upping my rating on this one. It has stood the test of time with me:)

After finishing up the Pine Peak Keenum yesterday I decided to bring a new stash of teas to work. This was my top pick this morning. It is one of the first fall like days here in kc and man is this tea going so well with the weather. I look forward to enjoying this one in the mornings. Deep dark cocoa. Warms my soul.