2016 Whispering Sunshine

It’s been a little while since I drank this. I remember quite enjoying it when I was first getting into puer, for its fruity yet upfront taste.

The wet leaf smells of ripe apricot. Today the sample was all broken up, smallish leaves, so it steeps fast. I accidentally oversteeped the first brew by a few seconds, meaning it came out with a little bit of a bitter uptake but overall, quite mellow and forgiving.

The second steep brings a little bit of creaminess. It might not be the right word, but it’s a sort of mouth-watering smoothness that I’m starting to pick up in a lot of sheng nowadays. Overall it’s pretty body centered, with a forward sweetness in the mid notes and a low bitterness that pops up and resides for a little while.

A pretty solid tea. Very strong floral notes, but not a whole lot of mouth feel or texture. I think this one will be better to drink sooner rather than later as far as aging.

Another very nice tea from Crimson Lotus. The leaves had a grassy and vegetal aroma. This one was pretty forgiving, so I was able to brew it either in a gaiwan or in my Jianshui pot.

The first steep had a hint of spice to it, followed by a crisp vegetal note, like peas or celery.

I didn’t get any spicy notes after the first steep, but the vegetal remained, followed by a fruity, perhaps citrus flavor. It’s a kind of flavor I’ve only encountered in one other puerh, Yunnan Sourcing’s 2013 Wu Liang Ye Sheng. There are differences in the flavor, but when I got that distinct hint of citrus, that’s immediately where my mind went. This flavor profile went on for about seven steeps or so. The citrus sometimes intermingled with a creamy floral note and the occasional hint of caraway. It’s hard to describe the floral flavor – it reminds me of a few things. First is lemongrass, partially I’m sure because that flavor is listed on Crimson Lotus’s website. At times it also made me thing of Elderflower – which has a citric/floral/fruity flavor. Finally, it sort of reminded me of Starfruit, an interesting fruit which I haven’t had in years but with a distinctive and memorable flavor.

The fruity citric flavor dropped off for the most part in the second half of the session, though the floral aspect remained in the finish. The mouthfeel got pretty interesting at this point. I think part of it was the remnant of a slight citric inclination, but it reminded me a bit of pinesol (without all the cleaning chemicals). Like my mouth had been oiled with a citrus flavored furniture cleaner. As weird as that sounds, it was good! This interesting texture dropped off a few steeps later, and the remainder of the session was characterized by smooth and light vegetal and floral notes.

This was a very interesting and tasty tea. The texture wasn’t notable for most of the session, and I also didn’t get any noticeable qi off of this tea. I think this one is more based on flavor and aromatic qualities, which it has in bunches. A fun and interesting tea to drink, but at the same time easy drinking and a forgiving steeper. I don’t think it would have really been possible to make this tea come out bitter.

I really don’t know where to start with this review, and this tea has me perplexed. It was my favorite of the 2016 offerings but nonetheless, I cannot describe it very well. I just enjoyed it a lot.

Aroma of leaves was green, fresh hay, a tinge of lime zest, and the freshness you experience from fresh cut pine or cedar or even mint. There has to be some phenol or natural alcohol in this tea giving that effect.

Gongfu brewing, gaiwan, flavor matched the name “whisper”, there was an ethereal quality about this tea, a softness, like a whisper. Imagine the feeling sitting in a quiet room, in the late afternoon, gazing out the window, as the heaviness of the sunlight fills the room and warms the air. You start to see the little particles of dust floating around in the sun beams. Its that complete stillness hugging you as you simply sit and just “be”. Literally, not waxing poetic, the name is totally befitting for this tea.

Again, why I like this tea I cannot articulate. Not much in the way of flavors, but there is a full body, velvety, thickness to it that is all pleasantness. It was relaxing, not sedating, and it made me comfortably dose off and fall into a gentle sleep at my desk, but I was not tired or feeling sedated.

This is a GREAT evening tea, its not intense, flavors are muted, its nice. The flavor is akin to smoke, not ash, but a gentle puff of smoke.

After about 10 steepings I started to push it and got more greeness and flavor, started becoming a bit drying in the mouth, but still pleasant. There is a gentle cleanness in this tea.

I didn’t even realize how much I enjoyed it until the next day and I wanted to drink it again. I approached this tea searching for specific qualities but this tea caught me by surprise. It didn’t have anything I was looking for, but I enjoyed everything it offered me and ordered a cake.

Not often I repeat the same tea two days in a row. Each other tea over the next few days just didn’t compare, there was something ethereal missing in those other teas that Whispering Sunshine has. I don’t know what it is though. It just kept calling me.

I still really like the packing of these samples. I like the idea of reusing them to wrap random chunks of puerh I have in jars.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKlafizAwlR/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

This one is a fascinating comparison to, say, WT2’s Tyler. If you just listed off the tasting notes: vegetal, grassy, dry-toast cracker, etc. – they’d sound like the same tea. But they’re like mirror-universe versions of each other, and perfect examples of the house styles. Where Tyler drops you into the oily, rich sweetness of grassy umami, only occasionally emerging into sharp cracker, Whispering Sunshine is all crispness and subtle prickles on the tongue and lifting up, up, into brightness.

My gut says that Crimson Lotus came, like me, into puerh from the green tea/white side, because Whispering Lotus has some of the pleasures, sort of, of long jian or certain white teas, and the energy of that fresh green crispness, where Tyler starts you in the green and throws you down into a well of quiet richness.

Both are great teas, and it’s kind of worth tasting them side-by-side.

first time trying this, and i did not get a shot at last year’s. brewed gongfu after a long work day; 4g:60ml in a porcelain gaiwan. i drank the rinse because i’m gross. ;) it was sweet, and cucumbery. the tea has picked my day right up.

it’s definitely on the sweet side. i haven’t been able to pull astringency out of it yet; closest that i’ve gotten is a tingling along the sides of the back of my tongue. it’s somehow light but thick-feeling? my teeth feel clean-shiny, too.

early on the wet leaf smells spicy-vegetal, and early flavour notes are reminiscent of cucumber. has some flavour components of a green oolong, too; kind of a buttery green vegetal flavour. there are definitely some other interesting flavours in there, particularly in some of the early steeps (i smelled them!), but i’m more in an enjoying mood than a dissection one.

this is really nice. for me, it’s probably suited to a particular tea-moodcraving. i look forward to drinking the remainder of my cake. :)

“whispering sunshine” seems like an appropriate name for it. i see the whisper — the flavours are there, you can hear the words, but they aren’t shouted at you. it’s got that sunshine warmth to wrap around you like a blanket, filling in all the nooks and crannies, just gently, like in the spring.
i’m into it.