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It’s always nice to get tea from Whispering Pines, since shipping costs from the U.S. to Canada are so high. Thanks to Daylon for the generous sample! I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of water at 195F for 7, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some uncounted steeps.

The dry aroma is hard to pin down, with elements that remind me of cranberry, grape, hay, malt, tobacco, tomato vine, and wood. It smells like a wild Yunnan tea, if that’s helpful. The first steep has notes of earth, forest floor, minerals, grapes, squash, honey, hay, malt, and wood. The next steep is sweeter, with molasses, tobacco, bread, red grapes, cranberries, pine, and maybe some spices. In the third and fourth steeps, I get bread, honey, sweet potato, raisins, hay, malt, cream, pine, earth, smoke, wood, and minerals, and the tea is a bit drying. The aftertaste is particularly sweet, though this is a savoury tea overall. I get berry and cherry notes in the next couple steeps, and the tea is a bit sweeter. As the session goes on, the tea becomes more like a standard Yunnan tea, with notes of bread, honey, pine, tannins, malt, and wood. The final steeps feature malt, wood, tannins, minerals, honey, and raisins, with some red grape sneaking in on the longer steeps.

This is a rustic, wild Yunnan tea that is nonetheless nuanced and complex. Its sweet, earthy flavours really do evoke a forest, particularly in the first few steeps, and I had fun trying to detect everything that was going on. I don’t usually gravitate toward these types of teas, but would highly recommend this one.